


The New Mexico Algorithm Part 1

by Cuzan Denbo (netherworld22)



Category: Books & Literature - Fandom, The Epic of Gilgamesh
Genre: Algorithm, Alternate Universe, Alternate conscious, Archaeology, Beowulf - Freeform, Enkidu - Freeform, Gilgamesh - Freeform, LGBTQ Themes, Love, M/M, Mythical Beings & Creatures, Rodeo clown, Shaman - Freeform, The One Percent, Trickster - Freeform, collective unconscious
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-10-19
Updated: 2020-10-19
Packaged: 2021-03-09 02:54:10
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 47,431
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27107530
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/netherworld22/pseuds/Cuzan%20Denbo
Summary: The New Mexico Algorithm is a retelling of the Gilgamesh epic in a contemporary US setting by a gay, American anthropologist-archaeologist and an interest in Carl Jung's mystical side as well as the issues of social- and environmental justice.  Part 1 deals with the character development of the protagonists: Archaeologist Gurd Khase who suffers from childhood PTSD resulting from his travels with his wealthy archaeology father around the world (my interpretation of Gilgamesh involves the shaman-warrior-king's ill-temper as owing to PTSD); and Ethan Dewar, heir to a fortune and rodeo clown who suffers from bipolar disorder (Enkidu was a bipolar-Trickster). The rodeo clown persona is a cover for Ethan's algorithmically driven company designing and implementing non-violent Black-ops against people and corporations (the One Percent) that damage the environment. Both protagonists have a history of traveling in the mythical Netherworld (the Jungian collective unconscious) where they meet while teens and fall in love before they meet in the conscious world as adults. Part 1 ends with the two men wrestling at a wedding (as in the Epic) where they fall in love. In Part 2 they deal with the Gurd's psyche in Netherworld and more.





	The New Mexico Algorithm Part 1

**Author's Note:**

> This manuscript was too long so The New Mexico Algorithm Part 1 is posted as Chapter 1 of 2. The New Mexico Algorithm Part 2 is posted as Chapter 2 0f 2.

Prologue  
The interminable grueling northward trek in the steaming brew of numbing heat, sweaty grime, and perpetual anxiety finally broke briefly before dawn late in May under a cloudy sky northwest of Ascensión, Mexico. Just south of the Rio Carretas the ten Guatemalan teens and their guide stealthily, furtively scurried off the boxcar and scampered for cover. Paula Ortega, her friends, and younger brother, Pedro, were allowed to rest in any shade they could find, bathe in pools of the river, scrounge for resources and eat a meager meal before dusk.  
Paula never imagined such a stinking, desolate stretch of terrain existed on the face of the earth like the land between the Rio Carretas and the US border. Except for a few muddy, oily patches in the bottoms of the maze of arroyos, there was no water, most of the brush was leafless, and the few trees withered in the high temperatures.  
Paula understood the rationale behind their approach to the border through the stark barren land when she saw the rickety line of barbwire fence a half kilometer in the distance. Carefully scanning the landscape, she saw no swiveling cameras atop metal posts, no surveillance towers, no glaring lights, no indications of patrols, or any sign of life except the tracks of a coyote.  
The scuttling clouds erratically concealed the moon, yet Paula was extremely cautious knowing any sign of coyote meant Huëhuecoyötl, the Mayan trickster god was lurking nearby looking for an opportunity for mischief. She and Pedro breathlessly whispered prayers, gripping their golden, Saint Christopher pendants.  
As he was leaving them, their guide instructed the children to separate in two groups of five before heading toward the border. Paula wiped sweat repeatedly from her eyes while looking for signs of a patrol during the dash holding her brother’s hand. Fears of capture and abuse paved the way looming shadows appearing in the sudden breaks in the clouds.  
Suppressing the sound of their gasping breath, Paula, Pedro and their friends entered the sparse cover of the scraggly mesquite and sage two hundred meters north of the fence. Regrouping and composing themselves, cautiously picking their way behind Paula another kilometer following the landmarks the guide described.  
They stopped on a steep slope dotted with pale boulders and dark mesquite. Although there was no litter or other obvious signs of use by people, the ground beneath the small, mesquite grove was flat and bare from tramping foot traffic. After shuffling and milling around briefly, they settled to wait for the return of the guide with the American, rationing the last of their food and water. Every minute Paula silently prayed they were not being abandoned to die in the heat.  
Hands steady, Paula calmly, methodically trimmed and cleaned Pedro’s finger- and toenails wiping his hands and feet with her spit and a bandanna. Whispering biblical stories, she combed his hair searching his body for ticks. Her companions listened as they prepared for the first leg of their journey in New Mexico. At the sound of a lone coyote howl in the distance, they stiffened but resumed their tasks calmed by Paula’s voice solid as the heat and the scent of mesquite.  
Appearing tranquil humming hymns, Paula’s anguish peaked near dusk, holding her breath at the first faint sound of footsteps and, further away, the tread of a horse. Turning flat on their stomachs to get a better view below the mesquite limbs, they all watched and prayed silently, breathing a collective sigh of relief when their guide identified himself in a low voice.  
As they emerged from the mesquite, the American guide silently pitched them a big plastic bag containing three liters of water, cheese, and bread. Paula heard the Mexican guide address the man in English as Devil Lizard, but in Spanish, he instructed them to refer to their new guide as Mister as he was turning to leave. Paula sensed Pedro was afraid of the man, a tall, wiry Mexican, or Native American whose pupils were dilated and hands were shaky.  
While they were eating, Mister leaned on the saddle horn, explaining in low, stern tones how he expected them to behave. He threw down another large plastic bag filled with carpet moccasins for covering their shoes. Lowering his big saddlebags in the twilight, he instructed them each to take one of the tightly wrapped packages from inside covered with burlap and add it to their packs.  
Paula estimated the weight to be about ten kilograms. She asked no questions doing as instructed. As night settled, they began their shuffling trek north behind Mister on his horse, covering any sign of his tracks.  
On a night in the middle of June, Paula was excited to hear the distant rumble of traffic from the east where she believed the highway to Albuquerque extended along the Rio Grande. On subsequent nights the sound was more persistent leading her and her companions to believe they were getting closer to the big city. Pedro seemed reluctant to join in the silent celebration his eyes below the lowered eyelashes always on Mister.  
Paula’s steadfast, encouraging smiles were tipping toward enthusiasm as she was sitting combing her wet hair after bathing at a small pond with the other girls late one afternoon. Bees were buzzing among blossoming cactus beyond the shade of the pinyons, larks calling.  
When Paula noticed Pedro was not leading the boys back from bathing as he usually did whenever they found water, she stood to look for him, brows knitting mouth turning down at the corners. When none of the boys would look her in the eye, and the faint sound of a struggle and grunts drifted up from the pool, Paula grabbed a paring knife from her pack, plunging headlong toward the pond.  
The sight of the naked man struggling with her brother propelled her frantically onward to stab blindly, furiously, repeatedly. Paula felt her eyes nearly pop from her head by a vicious blow to her stomach. Breathless, she sailed up into the air down into a big patch of prickly pear cactus tangled in sagebrush. Moments later while she struggled to breathe Pedro’s bloody, nude body landed next to her. The golden Saint Christopher medal and chain were not around his neck. She smiled brilliantly in an encouraging manner as she delicately pulled the paring knife from the side of Pedro’s throat.  
Paula smiled as she felt the rough rope tied around her wrists and ankles, the grating of her skin and clothes against the hair of the horse’s rolling haunches, and the smell of leather under a hot, bright sun. She smiled at Pedro’s face at the beach, his dark eyes sparkling with laughter, the sunlight twinkling in his wet hair. Sight captured in time by his eyes, but impressions of scents, sounds, and touch persisting, the sensation of shade, odors of hay, the shifting of the horse’s muscles, and the distant lowing of cattle.  
“I know nobody’s gonna pay for her, do what you want with her. She’s not my problem,” Paula heard Mister talking.  
“Old lady Lagash don’t ‘llow us to keep entertainment around,” a husky voice replying.  
“Bury her with the others,” Mister hissing. “Or tie some weights on her and throw her in the river, but slit her open before you do so she don’t float up.”  
  
Chapter One  
Dance and Death

The boy briefly considered the possibility he might have been daydreaming mind in another world between dark and dawn. The world did not seem to be the same as it did the instant before his father’s big Colt 45-70 Peacemaker boomed sixty meters up behind him in the ancient wadi. Dropping the gray mare’s reins on withers, kicking his feet from the stirrups, shifting his left leg up and tightly around the flaring saddle horn, lifting his right leg to hook the knee over his left ankle.  
While securing his seat on the saddle, wiping sweat from his forehead the boy heard more shots fired downslope by his tutor-bodyguard riding sixty meters lower on the track at the head of their little caravan. Nose crinkling, sniffing, gritting his teeth he checked his knives at his trouser-belt under the white tunic.  
A scream from the man in front of him blown by the force of a bullet to the right from his black horse. His blood turning to ice and his face to stone, the boy glimpsing in his peripheral vision the man on the ground. Jaw clenched writhing in agony on the dry sand, black horse bolting, kicking dust twirling in the first faint light of dawn.  
“Stand!” the boy muttered cords rigid in his neck filtering anger from the timbre of his voice, straining emotions from his mind, dispassionate, cold, a toss of his head flipping hair from his face.  
The gray mare stood stock still, hide twitching at the shoulders head motionless, conducting reconnaissance solely with her flickering ears. Waiting for the boy’s next command. Feeling detached, the boy calmly took a deep breath nostrils flaring lips pressed tight. Appraising the sound of the adversaries’ weapons. High-caliber rifles at this range?  
Electric, cerise line of fire etching the gentle arc of the distant horizon painting the pale earth pink. The boy shifted his icy stare to the left. Six horsemen in dark Western clothing. Descending the slope from the north. Reckless yet committed, determined. He noted two were wounded, swaying in their saddles losing control of their horses. Amateurs attempting to appear fearless?  
The closest man riding down on a big, brown gelding. The guy holding his reins in his right hand and something silvery, metallic the boy could not see balled in his left fist. Left-handed?  
The boy’s erection pressing against his trousers. Jaw jutting he remained as steady as the gray mare. More rounds fired. The man behind him yelling, twisting up off his white gelding, his pistol flying out into the boy’s range of vision. The white horse screaming, sand flying from jerking hooves as though it was hit by a bullet. The boy heard it bolting away dragging the groaning rider upslope to the south away from the attackers. The boy listened to the white horse stumble, fall, coughing, wheezing, thrashing.  
The boy allowed the big, brown gelding one more stride.  
“Dance right!” eyes narrow lips curling the boy shouted the command for the gray mare to swing into the head-to-rump, contact position on the right side of the gelding.  
The mare did not wait for the big horse to arrive. She twirled sharply almost 180 degrees surging up the incline. The boy smoothly eased his body back. Out and away at a 90-degree angle from the mare’s left side. Appearing to lose control of his horse. Helpless, harmless, seeming to grapple with the saddle horn fumbling the loose reins. Stealthily he pulled one of the knives from his belt with his right hand.  
As the boy anticipated, when the mare slammed into the side of the big gelding, viscously biting its rump, he was slung forward around in a counterclockwise arc to his right. The mare lifting his body on her hindquarters. Her buck aiming hooves at the gelding’s head. The boy watching the arc of his knife glint in the first crimson rays of the sun. He felt it slowly, dreamily slicing the air his body gliding around and forward with it. The gleaming edge a meteor flashing scarlet, carmine, and magenta over the gelding’s ears. Down into the man’s throat under his jaw with the jarring force from the momentum of the collision.  
Hot blood spurting onto his fist. The air knocked from his lungs as the boy was flung hard against the man’s chest. A frenzied symphony of gunshots, creaking leather, grunting, neighing, stamping hooves.  
Grinding his teeth in a grim grin, gasping for breath, lips dry twisting the knife deliberately his grip slippery. The stumbling gelding attempting to sidle away in the same instant. The boy’s eyes heavy-lidded watching the man’s ruby esophagus vermillion vessels erupting from the throat with the glistening blade as the horses thrashed jostling. Feeling the thrilling caress of steel against gristle and bone, the boy’s erection throbbed.  
His head on the man’s chest, the boy stunned, sweating, gulping for air, hazily gazing up from the corner of his eye. Hoping to wake.  
Watching the gleaming metal mesh of the net twirling from the man’s limp fist against the matte terra-cotta sky. A glittering, exploding supernova amid the twinkling, star-like dust pulsing around the swirling galaxy of glistening blood. Spine tingling, blood splattering his face, slipping down from the man’s chest to his rank crotch as the gelding tried pulling away. The mare relentlessly pressing.  
The boy drawing a shivering breath nostrils compressed as the whispering net unfurled. Sailing over the head and neck of the frantic, screaming gelding rearing away from the mare’s furious kicks in the slipping sand. The knife slipping over the man’s shirt the boy wiping blood from the blade.  
The boy did not try to dodge the inevitable. The net hoovering, sinking sighing down to cover him. Trapping him against the thighs of the twitching, gurgling man, the stream of blood. Chin resting on the crook of his knife-arm on the man’s crotch, the revolting stench of a dying man’s voiding bowels.  
The boy remaining calm, motionless listening to the coughing, choking death rattle, feeling the jerking spasms of the body. Bouncing against the man’s boots slipping, the dying body tipping over the far side of the gelding’s saddle. The boy watched the quivering look of horror in the man’s eyes becoming fixed his head falling back.  
“You asked the wrong guy to dance,” the boy whispered coldly lopsided grin.  
Holding his breath. Blocking entry into his body by the spirit of his assailant escaping with the man’s last gurgling moan. The boy’s lips pouting expelling air blowing a kiss.  
The boy felt the mare’s body part of his own, a centaur. The pressure of her powerful muscles twisting, kicking out at the gelding one last time. The boy pitched up against her neck his erection aching. Blood pounding through his body coursing through his eardrums, body shivering like a caressed cymbal. Triumphantly watching the wide-eyed, terrified gelding topple screaming to the ground mashing, crushing the man under him. Blood squirting, quenching the dry sand.  
Gunfire ringing in his ears, the boy slipping silently, stonily away from beneath edges of the dragging net. The fringe still tightly gripped in the hand of the dead man. The outstretched arm jerking, twitching. The struggling, grunting gelding in the entangling net grinding the man into the dust.  
The boy’s vision momentarily blurred. The mare swiftly sidling away from the powerful, thrashing hooves of the gelding. Tossing her head and snorting. The hot blood burning the boy’s face and throat.  
Through his legs and butt, he sensed the surprise and fury rising from the mare’s lungs into her throat. The squeal at abruptly colliding with a chestnut horse on her left. Pain shooting through his right leg. His erection twisted, scrotum and testicles pinched, hugged roughly between his thighs the boy was jerked around to his left. Gasping through tight lips, grimacing bouncing in the saddle. Squinting, swiping at the blood on his face in the sleeve of his right arm. Wiping blood from the blade on his left.  
The boy felt a rough rope tumble around his head and shoulders down his ribs to his elbows. He could not breathe or move his arms against the abrupt, violent constriction of the noose. He felt his body lifted inches off the angry, gray mare shoving furiously against the screaming chestnut, terrified neigh raw in her throat.  
The blood in the boy’s head and heart pounding, surging with the rhythm of the mare’s movements, synchronizing. Partners, jointed, joining, melding.  
The dance was getting heady, lewd, ruttish, euphoric. The boy felt the assailant struggling to slip his arm around his waist below the rope. The man’s hand gripping a knife swaying sinuously around the boy’s throat. Struggling for control cutting a searing line with the tip down the boy’s left jaw from ear to chin. The boy parting, licking his lips spitting on the blade. Arching his neck sensually lifting his head kissing the man on the side of his dirty, sweaty, pulsing neck. Rosy, young tongue lingering licking the dark ear, nostrils flaring inhaling the musk.  
Seductive, mouth partially open the boy teasingly struggling to maintain his leg-hold on the saddle horn. The man holding him close trying to tear him free take him away possess him. Hearts pounding, sweat dripping, lips trembling, open mouths gasping, breath rasping.  
The boy drawing a second knife from his belt with his left hand. Attuned to the mare’s twisting surging leftward, he edged both sharp blades around to the front of his waist. A moment’s hesitation until all her hooves were on the ground. Cleanly cutting the rope with a single outward thrust arms wings spreading free. Nostrils dilating lustily sucking in the air the stench of the man. The dancing horses snorting, choking, coughing dust, tossing heads and manes. The chestnut squealing, stumbling.  
Twisting to his right, his back and shoulders rubbing lasciviously against his attacker. Eyes bright and dark as sapphires, the boy slashed the arm around his waist from elbow to wrist ripping dark fabric and flesh. An arousing, taunting caress. Grunting with pleasure, forcefully driving the tip of the blade through the fleshy base of the thumb. Plunging it deeper scattering the bones of the hand. The boy shivered with ecstasy feeling no pain feeling no fear.  
A moan creeping up the dark throat breath shivering, body trembling in agony. The boy’s assailant clenching his teeth growling. The boy lurching to freedom the knife in his left hand wrenched from his grip.  
His butt sensing horse muscles swelling, rolling, rippling. Veins pulsing in his neck mouth a straight line, the boy releasing his leg-grip on the saddle horn. Twisting in tempo with the heaving mare, tucking his feet under him on the saddle springing into the air. He took a quick, deep breath above the amber whirlwind of glittering, stinging, starry sand. Soaring down, swirling with the force of the vortex, swinging his right arm in an arc high up into the pale, saffron sky. The man swiveling back to avoid the blow, pulling reins hard with his uninjured hand. Bringing his hands together, his body tingling the boy drove the knife down into the man’s forehead.  
The wild-eyed, screaming chestnut rearing up eye-to-eye with the gliding boy. The man jerking rigid mouth gaping eyes wide. The knife slipping from the boy’s grip. The gray mare’s final shove tipping the chestnut.  
As the boy looked down at him, a look of horror filled the falling man’s eyes. The eyes getting larger, darker the farther away they fell. Obsidian mirrors reflecting a monstrous image. Black holes in a churning universe of gold, citrine, and topaz stars. The boy pressing his lips forward pitching his dying assailant a kiss. Stonily watching the eyes rolling back up into the head. The head lolling on the neck. The body dropping dead off the terrified chestnut crashing to the ground.  
The boy dropping sinking into a crouch on the mare’s haunches. She instantly standing like a stone statue, trembling, blowing hard, eyes on the scrambling chestnut mare. Ears turning listening for his next command.  
“Let him go!” the boy’s father barked in English at the bodyguard chasing the single surviving horseman racing down the wadi into the glaring white sunlight.  
“Leave one to spread the tale of what a thirteen-year-old Khase and his horse can do,” he yelled lowering his arm and hand with the big Peacemaker pointed down at the would-be captor.  
The boy stood motionless dripping blood and sweat returning the gaze of his father resting calmly on his horse, the arm and hand holding his firearm easing to the saddle horn. The boy carefully sliding onto the saddle slightly askew on the mare shaking from the violence and coppery smell of blood. Heaving, blowing, patiently waiting for the boy’s next command.  
“Rest!” The boy said firmly clenching his teeth into a grim, white grin to control his heavy breathing. He leaned forward to hug the mare’s neck blood dripping from his head onto her shoulders his erection dwindling against the saddle horn.  
The boy closed his eyes against the images saw reflected in his dying assailants’ eyes. Chest heaving, his warm blood flowing from his chin to mingle with his attackers’, tears squeezed from beneath his eyelids, bile wrenched from his gut convulsing past his lips. He sensed tendrils of the tears and bile worming into the blood and grit, seeping down into his skin taking root in his face hardening into a mask.  
Left hand clenching his stomach right gripping his face, Gurd Khase lurched howling, weeping from the nightmare.  
“Sāman,” he gasped.

Chapter Two  
Khat and Hashish

A Mockingbird sang forcefully from the motionless, antique prancing-horse weathervane on the big, yellow barn trimmed in white. The air hot and dry, the cloudless sky robin-egg blue. An amber leaf drifted from the big green cottonwood as Gurd parked his gray, Jeep Cherokee on the north side of his mother’s home. He briefly fingered his earring, gaze sweeping the property as the dust kicked up by his arrival settled.  
The house was a simple, sprawling, white rectangle with surrounding colonnade entrances on all four sides, double, mahogany doors facing west. A waist-high adobe and stucco wall enclosed the extensive flower garden and fountain on the east side and the two-car garage with a second-floor apartment on the south. Gurd noted the red-tile roofs were in good shape nothing hanging from the gutters.  
As a matter of habit checking maintenance, Gurd scanned the barn and corrals, kennel, equipment sheds, large greenhouse, vegetable garden, and almond grove all north of the house. Jake was an energetic, middle-aged man, but sometimes Gurd pitched in with the ranch chores. He waved to Jake, who was checking the irrigation system in the western pasture a spacious, green oasis surrounded by desert. In the distance, Gurd could see the archaeological crew at the edge of his mother’s property, and almost a mile away, traffic on Interstate 25 extending along the line of trees marking the Rio Grande flowing down to Albuquerque.  
The kennels on the east side of the barn were open during the day so the big Anatolian Shepherds could roam freely on the property whenever they deemed necessary. They were big, tough, highly suspicious animals compelled to investigate their territory often and thoroughly. One emerged from the kennels trotting toward Gurd followed by ivory puppies, tails wagging, plump bodies tumbling in the sand.  
Gurd strolled to the corrals at the front of the barn rubbing the noses and necks of the two, heavily pregnant, Kabarda mares ambling from the barn at the sound of his Jeep. Like most of his mother’s horses, they were white, rare for the breed except for those with a significant Arabian heritage. Gurd smelled their breath believing it reflected the condition of their health. He gently exhaled into their nostrils.  
Gurd took a deep breath of the sage-scented air of central New Mexico. Soothed by his contact with the affectionate mares, turning, walking toward the house. The shepherd and her gaggle of pups gleefully intercepted him halfway there and kept him happily occupied for several minutes, further diminishing his dread of the day ahead the lingering effects of the nightmare.  
“You don’t see a monster,” he murmured gazing into the adoring, brown eyes of a puppy, fingers tickling chin rubbing ears.  
On the tiled floor of the colonnade, Gurd passed his hand through his thick, black hair, slipped off his boots, spat khat leaves into the brass spittoon. Closing the door, he was suddenly grateful to be out of the relentless glare of the June sunshine.  
The house Neve designed and Gurd helped complete with finishing touches had no hallways, one room opened into the next. Doorways were arched, and doors hung only on entrances to bedrooms. All interior walls were smooth and white. The floors were polished limestone slabs. His mother liked the fossils.  
Feeling relaxed, Gurd wiped the sweat from his brow with a bandanna. He deeply inhaled the faint scent of sandalwood wafting on the cool, soft currents under the ceiling fans.  
His mother didn’t purchase furniture with features attributable to a style, or period, but most of it was antique. She was interested only in the excellence of craftsmanship and quality of materials coupled in simple, serviceable form. Neve preferred maple, but there was plenty of teak, mahogany, rosewood, katalox, and ebony. Every item designed for sitting or reclining was draped with an assortment of rugs, blankets, or tapestries, and laden with cushions and pillows. Each room had a theme, or source for the woven fabric—Persian, Navajo, Indian, Egyptian, Chinese, Peruvian. All Circassian rugs and weavings were reserved for Neve’s bedroom. Gurd had brought a few of these cherished textiles with him when he arrived back in 2001.  
Gurd absentmindedly wound his way through the house, glancing once through a window at the shimmering garden fountain, until he came to an interior room he called the Celestial Study. The room had no windows, but a large skylight in the ceiling’s center. The fabrics were Persian with prominent use of rich, indigo dyes. Decorating the walls were reproductions of striking illustrations of the night sky as interpreted by scholars over the ages, as well as representations of a few prehistoric rock art panels from around the world thought to depict arrangements of celestial bodies.  
He had helped his mother hang the large color photographs of the sun, moon, planets, galaxies, and supernovae among prints of the bronze, Nebra Sky-disk dated to 1600 BCE, the Ptolemaic geocentric models of the universe, Tycho Brahe’s sixteenth-century geo-heliocentric system, and seventeenth-century models of Nicolaus Copernicus’ heliocentric system. Scattered between the colorful prints were reproductions of historic documents, a diagram from Isaac Newton’s Principia Mathematica demonstrating his proof of Kepler’s second law, and a Greek copy of Aristarchus’s third-century calculations on the relative sizes of the Sun, Moon, and Earth.  
Near the desk at the center of the room beneath the skylight mounted on pedestals were replicas of eighteenth-century orreries and tellurions, and the seamless celestial globe of Muhammad Salih Tahtawi with its bizarre surface covered in Arabic and Persian figures and inscriptions. As he walked past a few of these, Gurd briefly checked the bases and supports for stability and balance. On the desk beneath the skylight, amid blossoming African violets and orchids sat a bronze replica of the Antikythera, the ancient Greek analog computer designed for astrological and calendrical purposes.  
“You were the sweetest child in the world,” grinning, eyes bright, nose crinkling his mother spoke briskly from the door on the east side, the sunroom behind her brimming with exotic plants.  
Neve was pleased to see his handsome face smiling, the expressive indigo eyes and heart-shaped mouth relaxed, the broad brow smooth. There were times in the past she had witnessed the fierce and implacable mask he wore in public when he was unaware of her presence in a busy store, or on the University of New Mexico campus. His eyes dark and unyielding like a raptor’s.  
Steam was rising from the traditional, long-handled, copper cezve she held with a potholder. Her graying hair in a ballerina bun, Neve was dressed in a loose, white-cotton tunic, sleeves extending just past her elbows, trousers extending to mid-calf. The rope belt and sandals were raw cashmere combed from the Neve’s goats.  
Lean and trim at sixty years old, she stood a few inches shorter than Gurd’s six-foot-three. Gazing at her, he was momentarily annoyed that so many Americans thought it necessary to compliment his mother telling her she looked like Audrey Hepburn. She might look delicate, ethereal but she could handle a big, temperamental horse as well as any rancher.  
“If I was sweet it must’ve been because I was imitating you,” he replied eyes direct smiling strolling across the room, leaning to plant a quick kiss on her forehead.  
“I suppose that’s what parenting is all about,” Neve replied grin broadening turning to pour the frothy, Turkish coffee into cups placing the cezve on a ceramic trivet amid pots of blushing bromeliads. “The impulse to teach her child to be like herself may be a conceit, but one nearly impossible for a mother to evade. Of course, a parent dreams her child’s life will not be like her own, but grander, more fulfilling. You’ve just about lost the last of your Scottish brogue.  
“We all wish you would come to stay at least while you’re working on your dissertation,” Neve said head canting to the right watching her son spooning sugar into his coffee. “You’d probably smoke less and eat better. You know Phoebe loves to cook big meals.”  
“I’ll think about it Mom,” Gurd replied glancing at her with a smile, nodding, thick hair bobbing strands flicking across his forehead.  
“Good,” Neve said smiling enthusiastically. “Jake probably could use some help now and then. You haven’t been working in the field much lately. I believe the horses and dogs are happier when you’re here.”  
“Any more problems from the new water bureaucrat about getting what you need to irrigate?” he asked brows rising forehead wrinkling tasting his coffee.  
“No, son,” his mother solemn, shaking her head to reassure him. “Just a new man on the job with a case of nerves.”  
“Good. I’ll be here for the foaling for sure,” Gurd said. “I dreamed they’d both be colts.”  
“You know, the key to the mystery of your dreams may be in the experiences leaving the most intense, lasting impressions during your globe-trotting,” face relaxed Neve commented matter-of-factly. Not quite the same tone she used while lecturing her students at the university. She strolled to a large curule chair settling on the cushions and weavings.  
“You’ve told stories of the high points, but give me a brief synopsis all at once from the beginning?” the inquisitive tone arched eyebrows reflecting her concern the request to relive the past might trigger a PTSD episode. “Maybe I’ll be able to ferret out the images, people, or experiences that are meaningful symbols, symbols significant in your dreams. Something that will help me determine the meaning of the dream that’s got you intrigued.”  
“Tall order, Mom,” said Gurd easing onto a sofa. He stretched his long legs, slowly rotating the horsehair bracelet on his left wrist against his thigh, taking a sip of the hot, sweet coffee.  
“I’ve never…,” he said pausing, contemplating voice dropping into a sigh.  
“I felt a sense of heritage, legacy when we returned to Beirut in ‘91 after the bombing stopped,” murmuring reflectively eyes on his coffee. “I guess I felt a sense of kinship even with strangers in the big, open markets because the city had been the center of family operations for generations, wondering how everyone knew my name, made me feel welcome like a long-lost relative, cherished.  
“Being away from you for the first time, living in a new country, watching the city rebuild, the people regain their stature. Starting to shave may have had a lot to do with a new sense of purpose, looking at myself in the mirror, taking my place as a Khase in Beirut,” Gurd said quietly, voice low, confidential, taking another sip. “Drinking coffee with the men in the cafés. Thamade’s first lessons in wrestling and Circassian sword dancing without the knives.  
“I wanted to learn the languages,” he continued tentatively, finishing the coffee, “but Dad said no. He said recognizing the truth was hampered by understanding the words. I was supposed to rely on my instincts in reading a person’s eyes, listening to the tone and inflections of the voice, watching for micro-expressions. Then I would know the person’s true intentions before the interpreter spoke the words. Establishing relationships, trust.  
“At first we dealt only with agents connected with Granddad Khase,” Gurd said sighing left eyebrow lifting, blinking. He set the cup on a coaster, closed his eyes, lifted his hands to rub his face then dropped arms to his sides.  
“Any new agents,” Gurd releasing a deeper sigh, “we accepted came with references from other agents our company worked with before the war, with Grandad, so we could be sure they represented clients who were reputable people, or institutions, museums, not treasure hunters. The first year was a jumble filtering down into a system. Understanding relationships, organizing.”  
Opening his eyes, Gurd pulled a cushion to his chest long, strong fingers toying with the tassels and fringe. Neve drew her legs up, seated with her ankles crossed yoga-style, leaning to her right against a cushion.  
“Those were the initial lasting impressions. Legacy, establishing trust and organizing things, straight razors and shaving, Thamade’s lessons,” Gurd muttered brows knitting, fingering the part in his hair and drawing a deep breath.  
“Memorable times… the Dogon people of Mali,” he said his focus distant, reflective. “We put together an expedition for a client who wanted to explore the Bandiagara Escarpment where the Dogon have lived forever. She planned to search the caves, and rock shelters to record any rock-art evidence for the antiquity of Dogon knowledge of astronomy, pictographs, and petroglyphs depicting the arrangement of stars. You know,” a glance flicking briefly to his mother, “the Sirius B mystery, how the Dogon could have known there was a dwarf star circling the star, Sirius before modern astronomers knew.  
“We took her there to meet the staff we picked for her, interpreters, guides, and informants. I was eleven. Thamade threatened to put a leash on me the first day because I was so excited. Impulse control he called it,” Gurd smiled, pushing the cushion away grabbing another. The memories were pleasant. He felt calm, closing his eyes enjoying the caffeine surge.  
“The Dogons we dealt with hadn’t converted to Islam, still practiced animism-shamanism, the first spiritual belief system practiced universally by humans since the birth of humanity. Thamade explained animism as though it was a big secret,” Gurd chuckled eyes flickering open turning to the skylight.  
“But it was new to me, so I was hanging on every word looking around at the world with new eyes. I mean right at that very moment Thamade was telling me this stuff I was searching for a glimpse of the secret, sparkling life force given by the creator of the universe to everything, rocks, trees, people,” Gurd said eyes wide, grinning, turning to look at his mother sharing the moment of wonder.  
“I believe I gave more thought to animism… people at the very beginning of humanity believing the creator of all things imbuing, permeating every little thing with a life force… believing that for almost 200,000 years… than I had ever with anything before,” Gurd drew a deep breath closing his eyes head leaning against a pillow.  
“So animism led to an explanation of shamanism. That led to an explanation of why in ancient times a man had to have shamanic power to enter and travel in the netherworld to find secrets or defeat monsters before the people would accept him as their leader, or king. In Egypt, the Pharaonic succession traditionally went to the child inheriting the most effective shamanic powers,” Gurd smiled, reminiscing, reaching up to touch his earring.  
“Dad has in his computer files at least four transactions between contemporary Christians of First Century scrolls that corroborate Christ was a shaman-warrior,” Gurd said glancing at his mother to see if her reaction indicated he was revealing something she didn’t know. When she merely nodded he continued. “Christ would have been king of the Jews if the priests of a certain Jewish sect hadn’t wanted to rid their religion of the last vestiges of animism-shamanism.  
“The so-called lost years of Christ was a period of his life suppressed by early Christians while they were attempting to obliterate all connections with the Jewish shamanic tradition,” Gurd sighed disgusted at the deception. “They did a pretty thorough job of it. Atheists would have a field day if they ever got their hands on those scrolls. Russian atheists especially.  
“The next year the big, exciting thing was in Kenya,” he lifted the pillow with both hands bouncing it on his head gently, voice growing stronger memories taking shape. “Archaeoastronomical site, Namoratunga Two, about twenty-three hundred years old on the west side of Lake Turkana, long ago the source of the Nile. It’s a stone circle surrounding nineteen basalt pillars believed to be aligned with seven star systems.  
“The client was looking for similar, but older sites possible links demonstrating how such a development occurred in the area. Clues to where the astronomical knowledge might have come from if it hadn’t originated there. Thamade tied a camel halter around my waist, a leash,” restlessness emerging at the thought of being restrained, caffeine surging in his system, “but he made it look like a belt for my tribal robe. He grabbed my attention with lectures on astronomy, astrology, superstitions, and religion.  
“We met one of their shaman, Dhugaa,” he murmured stuffing the pillow next to the one behind his head, raising his legs tapping the tips of his toes on the underside of the ebony table.  
Gurd did not recount the story of his bout of scarlet fever while they were in Kenya knowing his mother knew all about his illness and recovery. He remembered the taste when the Oromo shaman gave him fresh khat leaves to chew, the texture of the earth when he was lowered naked onto the sand at the center of the Namoratunga Two circle of stones, the smell of the night air. He recalled the sight of the wrinkled face of the old, black man, the sound of his heavy voice mumbling incantations with immense conviction and passion.  
Gurd stilled his restless movements, opening his eyes to ward off the visions of the night sky he had witnessed while Dhugaa had aligned him first with one star system, and then after some time with another, then another until his body had been rotated 360 degrees between dusk and dawn. The fever had broken at sunrise. Gurd had watched his dad and Thamade follow Dhugaa’s every move wrapping him in a linen sheet, carrying him off the site to a pile of overripe tomatoes pounding it into pulp and juice with his feet, lowering, covering Gurd with the mash.  
He says for your skin Thamade had explained interpreting Dhugaa’s words. Characteristics of sympathetic magic because tomatoes are red similar to the skin color of a person suffering from Scarlet fever Thamade had added with a wink.  
The old man had stalked off with a warning to drink but not eat or move from the tomatoes until the sun dropped below the horizon. Gurd had recovered that day, but he still had dreams of the whirling night sky, and the rearrangement of the stars and constellations by a frightening, strangely twinkling creature.  
Gurd didn’t tell his mother that shortly after this episode he had developed the ability to travel in the Jungian collective unconscious in the periods of lucid dreaming between sleep and waking. After his first experience in the Otherworld, he told Thamade, who suggested Gurd keep it their secret.  
Glancing at his mother sitting her cup in its saucer on the table, he wondered if she suspected. Gurd knew Carl Jung was a frequent reference in the classes she taught in psychological anthropology at the university but she didn’t emphasize the psychiatrist’s mystical side involving the collective unconscious, the Netherworld.  
Gurd briefly envisioned the first forays of his avatar into the Netherworld with the avatar of the black shaman. Dhugaa had taught him to find the trails and paths in Ekera, the Oromo Otherworld, leading to secrets of curing sickness and healing wounds. Learning the mysteries of navigating the Underworld had been a challenge in and of itself. In his mind’s eye, he saw the surreal, phantasmagorical realms where the glowing, glittering life forces of real and mythical, hybrid beings experienced a perpetual, luminous kaleidoscope of natural and man-made phenomena. Gurd shook his head, pressing the palms of his hands against his eyes.  
“I believe the client was an associate of the client for the Nabta Playa project,” he continued, clearing his throat, standing, pacing.  
“Nabta Playa is a ceremonial center first used over ten thousand years ago in the Nubian Desert west of the Nile near the Egypt-Sudan border,” voice steady envisioning the stones and sand under the hot sun, the smell and taste of invigorating khat. “Megaliths, a small stone circle, some rectangular stone slab structures, probably tombs. Evidence of bull worship.  
“That client wanted to try to find something there to link the people who used the site to the culture that evolved into pharaonic Egypt. As an alternative to the idea Egyptian culture was a scion of Mesopotamia. All three cultures practiced bull worship, bull sacrifice,” sighing heavily remembering how enthusiastic he was initially on every project and how disappointed he was to learn afterward so few clients succeeded in getting the results they wanted.  
Stopping to examine the Muhammad Salih Tahtawi sphere, Gurd lifted his hand turning the globe slowly with his fingertips. He moved on inspecting, touching, and twirling tellurions and orreries as he recounted subsequent projects, journeys, ethnic groups, and their cultures.  
Hesitantly, haltingly, he recounted the trip to southeastern Turkey not far from the headwaters of the Euphrates where the client wanted to find a site similar, or ancestral to Gobekli Tepe, a megalithic site used by hunter-gathers beginning circa 10,000 BCE. As usual, they departed soon after the client was settled in a camp in the wilderness with Kurdish staff, horses, camels, and gear.  
Testing the stability of a few mounted objects, Gurd recalled their visit to the famous site itself, which had turned archaeological thought on its head about the relationship between formal religious expression and stages in the development of culture. He was captivated and desperately wanted to stay and join the Gobekli Tepe crew in that very first year of excavation, 1995, eyes eagerly watching an excavator’s trowel scraping sand, hoping to see a mysterious artifact that had lain hidden for nearly twelve thousand.  
He was crushed when his dad said no. The site was just too close to the Iraqi-Syrian border, and Kurds in nearby eastern Turkey were perpetually uneasy. Lugal explained the area was considered by people in-the-know to be a no-travel zone. Thamade nodded his agreement and Gurd didn’t argue.  
Gurd involuntarily jerked his head back from the visions of the horror-filled eyes of the two men he killed on the return trip. There had been two previous attempts in the previous year to abduct him, and his cold outrage had erupted during that third encounter. He felt a slight wave of nausea and bile rise in his throat.  
Soon after that clash, he had experienced his first PTSD episode, which he and Thamade decided to keep secret from his father. Several days later Thamade had bought the first hashish and hookah. Gurd smiled ruefully at the memory of his first coughing exhalation.  
  
Chapter Three  
Ancestors and Roots

“You asked the wrong guy to dance,” Gurd whispered hollowly. He rubbed his eyes with the heels of his palms, grimaced, briefly tracing the scar along the line of his jaw with a fingertip.  
Clearing his throat, glancing at his mother listening attentively, he rambled about starting formal wrestling lessons with a coach in Ankara, the city built on the ancient Hittite capital, the place iron was first smelted and forged into knives. He briefly mentioned attending classes in the Ankara Mining School, studying geology, chemistry, and pedology, and Thamade’s continuing lessons in Circassian sword dancing.  
Gazing around at the wealth of knowledge represented in the images and objects from around the world, Gurd fleetingly contemplated the nearly overwhelming richness and diversity of his education and experiences with foreign people in exotic, cultural environments. He didn’t remember ever considering risk in his travels searching for sources of enlightenment, yet he remembered thinking at the age of fifteen the whole of Asia was out to kidnap him for ransom.  
Gurd had wondered just how wealthy his father was and why everyone knew his name but could think of no appropriate way to question Lugal on the matter. Thamade was discreetly evasive.  
“Nothing is more important, more valuable than antiquities,” Thamade had said, grunting. “Everyone needs to be connected to their ancestors.”  
Attempting to prevent his abduction in Ankara, Gurd had killed an Arab youth about his age and severely wounded the juvenile’s accomplice. The PTSD episodes had become more frequent as had the hashish-smoking, khat-chewing, and caffeine-consumption. Pausing to contemplate the perfect, white blossom of an orchid beneath the skylight, he wondered if his growing anxieties at that time were symptoms of his ignorance of risk or unconscious refusal to accept the fact his freedom, perhaps even his life was continually at risk.  
The intervening bouts of depression and anxiety had caused Gurd to consider suicide. He wasn’t the person he used to be and considered killing the person he was becoming. Gurd thought Thamade must have sensed something was awry when he offered to take him into the outskirts of Ankara to get acquainted with a shaman of the Alevi. Promising nothing, on subsequent visits the old shaman had accompanied Gurd into the Alevi netherworld, Dankuš Daganzipaš, in search of a cure for Gurd’s disorder. The excursions were entertaining and educational but he discovered no trace or hint leading to a cure for PTSD.  
Gurd believed people must have suffered from PTSD since the dawn of humanity. Ancient warriors were no less sensitive to battle-related stress than soldiers today. Human is human whether 200,000 years ago or now. Gurd was convinced traditional healers of the present and shaman of the past knew of a healing method, a cure.  
“How do you keep these orchids so happy, Mom,” Gurd asked passing a hand across his forehead.  
“They’re amazing aren’t they,” Neve responding turning slightly to glance at her son and the orchids. “Just the right amount of water and sunshine is all it takes once they’re rooted in the right stuff.  
“Go on,” his mother encouraged as Gurd hesitated considering if now was the time and place to divulge his former ability to travel in the collective unconscious. Gurd decided her indication he should continue signaled this was a time for dreams, not the Netherworld.  
Gazing up at the skylight, checking for clouds, Gurd described how they moved on to Karachi, Pakistan, far from the Afghan Civil War while working for a client. He recalled wrestling lessons from a Pakistani coach, a stint of formal education in an English academy, and studies in the analysis of prehistoric pottery and ceramography. He could think of nothing relevant to interpreting his dream but told of their trip to the Upper Mustang region of Nepal making arrangements for clients who wanted to study ancient Buddhist caves. Neither the Pakistani Bitan nor the Nepali Jhankris accompanying him into their netherworld, Kur, were of assistance in finding relief, but he considered suicide less.  
He didn’t mention it but thought Sam must have been just across the Nepali border at that time in bustling Prayagraj, at the confluence of the Ganges and Yamuna rivers, Uttar Pradesh, India. Sam, Gurd thought, short for Sāman, the Vedic word for song. Sāman, the ethereal melody bringing what little harmony there was to his miserable life.  
“We were in Hong Kong in ‘98 after the British relinquished sovereignty in ‘97, the year the avian flu killed so many people,” Gurd commented thoughtfully, recalling Hong Kong, searching in his mind for the clue helping his mother untangle the meaning of his dream. He tried to recover some sense of the euphoria of hashish and sidestep the memory of being forced to kill a man who was nearly successful in relieving him of his knife in old Hong Kong harbor.  
Thamade had solemnly given Gurd the piece of red amber now encased in the earring above the tuff of Thamade’s hair. In the amber was the carved figure of a Circassian sword dancer. Gurd considered it an acknowledgment of his warrior-level skill with knives.  
“And after the worst of the Asian financial crisis… Indonesia … didn’t affect China much,” Gurd muttered voice flat a vague dismissive gesture of a hand.  
Gurd remembered listening attentively as the wealthy Chinese client explained he wanted the Chinese to get some credit for influencing the Olmec and Maya civilizations of Mesoamerica. The life-size replica of the small sculpture discovered in the Olmec territory known as The Wrestler found near The Gulf in southern Mexico was displayed prominently in the courtyard of the old man’s mansion. Gurd agreed with the client the features of the figure resembled the Chinese more than any other ethnicity. He recalled his disappointment several years later learning the figure was judged to be a fake.  
Gurd had become an enthusiastic convert to the client’s cause—the Olmec Connection he dubbed it. However, by the time he had traveled with his father and Thamade to Guatemala, visited a few Olmec and Mayan sites met with archaeologists and dealt with bureaucrats, Mayan interpreters, and guides, set up everything required for the expedition to be conducted by the client’s investigative crew, and returned to Hong Kong Gurd’s enthusiasm had waned substantially. His most enduring memories were the times he spent with Mayan shamans traveling in the netherworld, Xibalba, hope for a PTSD cure springing eternal.  
Gurd stopped his rambling to look beyond the plants in the sunroom at some passing clouds, glancing at the cezve nestled among the deep green and bright red foliage. He dragged his fingertips across the scar on his neck from a pistol round he received in Guatemala where his horse had been shot from under him during the attack and Gurd had shot and killed the assailant recklessly riding toward him.  
Hatred of his attackers for their greed and for forcing him into violence had become entrenched in Gurd’s psyche by the time they left Central America. He hated the violent part of himself. He dreaded the thought the monster he was convinced he had become might burst out of concealment beneath his skin for everyone to see.  
Neve noted her son’s increasingly flat tone of voice indicating he was becoming weary of his monologue, and wary of where the story was going. Gurd circled back into his mother’s sight. His hands clasp at the back of his neck, head down eyes examining the fossils in the limestone floor cool under his feet.  
Gurd abruptly jerked out of his reverie and launched into the story of the Japanese client in Tokyo presenting them with a similar challenge—the Inca Connection. He had listened while the man explained he wanted to uncover proof the Japanese Jomon culture was responsible for the maritime culture springing up on the Peruvian coast thousands of years ago eventually leading to a culmination in the Incan Empire. Gurd remembered his growing enthusiasm as the client presented recent research in genetic mapping supporting the idea.  
Gurd smiled sadly at the memory of his cheerful eagerness when he flew with his father and Thamade to Peru in 2001 where they plowed through another bureaucracy, the inevitable bribes at the client’s expense, located trustworthy Chincha interpreters and guides. They visited sites of the famous Caral culture in the Casma and Lurin valleys and patiently made all the arrangements for the expedition.  
Gurd remembered being shocked by the images and figures representing the Staff God of the Caral culture. At 10,000 years old, it was the earliest known representation of a god in the western hemisphere. The hybrid creature had a human form holding a staff or trident in each hand, fangs and webbed feet—the very same half-human, half-animal that had rearranged the stars and constellations in the night sky during the hallucinations Gurd experienced in his bout of Scarlet fever inside the stone circle in Kenya. He sighed wistfully, combing his hair with fingertips, fleetingly attempting to grapple with the intricacies connecting the dimensions of the worlds he had experienced, the incomprehensible risks.  
In his spare time in Peru, Gurd had traveled with Q’ero shamans in their netherworld, Uku Pacha, learning secrets in energy healing. These men and women, practicing the ancient Inca tradition, had been evasive when Gurd questioned them about treatment for his PTSD.  
Uneasy, Gurd recalled he was about at the end of his rope from depression and anxiety just about then. (The hashish and khat had been forbidden on the trip, but he kept cocoa leaves between cheek and gum while he was in Peru.) When the Japanese crew arrived and settled in, Lugal surprised him and Thamade by whisking them off to visit the Nazca Lines and then south to Tierra del Fuego to see “the ends of the earth”.  
“In Tierra del Fuego Dad gave me this horsehair bracelet,” Gurd said holding his left arm for his mother to examine as though she had never before admired it or heard the story. “It’s got cuttings from the manes of every horse of our Lebanon herd. His idea of a graduation present for horsemanship.  
“We flew to Madrid where Thamade died July 2001,” Gurd said sighing, voice dropping, his throat dry without the saliva-stimulating khat, easing onto the sofa positioning a pillow behind his head grasping another to his chest.  
He fingered the earring crafted using the red amber from the shores of the Black Sea, a platinum ring, and a clipping of Thamade’s hair. Closing his eyes, Gurd raised his left forearm over his face and rubbed the tattoo on his neck above the scar left by the bullet wound with his right thumb lowering his arm to hug the pillow.  
“At the time Thamade was attacked, I was asking the hotel concierge about the bullfight schedule,” he said emphasizing the final words as though he thought this was the most ridiculous thing a nineteen-year-old could have been doing.  
“That’s where I got this tattoo, and the earring made,” he murmured sing-song cadence trying to sound light, childish.  
Lips tight, he restrained himself from saying that was where and when his visits to the Netherworld ended. While he dozed in the hospital waiting room, he tried during his periods of lucid-dreaming to enter the Otherworld in a desperate attempt to find a way to save Thamade’s life but was prevented by a terrifying, horned, yellow-eyed, bullish monster brandishing a sword.  
“I came to the United States for a vacation in August to see your new home, and then came September the eleventh, no more travel,” a note of bitterness creeping into his voice jaw clenching. “Ten years ago. Nineteen years old. End of summary,” he said hoarsely, suddenly sounding like an emotionally and physically exhausted nineteen-year-old.  
Neve watched her son silently for several minutes, glancing up once at the skylight to wait for a cloud to pass. She had listened carefully not just to the content but the nuances in tenor and tone of his voice. She had deciphered a particular preference for the Ankara coach over the Pakistani, a partiality for the Japanese client over the Chinese, a distinct dislike for Guatemala, and a disdain for Tierra del Fuego.  
When her son’s clenched jaw relaxed, and he seemed to adjust to the present time and place she moved over to sit by Gurd and take his right hand in her hand.  
“Son,” she sighed, tightening her grip, “you could not have had worse parents. The fortunes of our lives have instilled in you a sense of dispossession. You were born to a couple whose people were driven from their ancestral homes in the Caucasus by the Russians. Then we fled our home in Beirut where another war was beginning, and then I could not be close to you when you needed me most when you were born.”  
“Mom, please, no,” Gurd’s voice lowering hoarse with each word face twisting. “Please, don’t. I don’t want to think of you having regrets, being unhappy. Dad was there with me most of the time in the hospital after I was born. There was nothing you could have done.”  
“The cultural contexts you experienced while traveling with your father included a variety of the traditional native lifestyles,” Neve said evenly after a long pause and a deep breath, “but they all have certain aspects in common like living close to the earth and relying on the knowledge of the weather and astronomy, the stars to guide you at night.  
“That is quite the opposite of the American technological world, which you are uncomfortable with, and you feel dulls the mind,” Neve continued plowing on toward her interpretation of the dream troubling her son. “You’ve also had a hard time adjusting to the settled life, which you think of as restrictive, diminishing you in some way. In sum, you’ve had to switch from an adventurous, mobile lifestyle traveling among traditional peoples to a settled technological world.  
“The colloquial phrase would be you are without roots,” Neve said voice level squeezing his hand, “as most people would interpret the meaning of roots.”  
Gurd lowered his left arm to his side but didn’t open his eyes. His mother reached over to hold both his hands in hers the pillow tumbling from his chest to the edge of the sofa.  
“I believe,” she said, lifting her chin, voice resolute, “the essential message of your recent dream, the one about the Staff God hurling a meteorite from the sky to earth indicates you’ll receive the opportunity to make adjustments to change your life.  
“In the dream, you searched for and found where the meteor from the sky fell to the earth, and you cherished it,” Neve said softly watching Gurd’s face. “I believe the meteorite symbolizes an uncommon man. The dream means you will embrace the challenges he represents with the same determination and courage you demonstrated in your travels around the world.”  
Gurd opened his eyes shifted his head dislodging the pillow behind his neck. It toppled down colliding with the pillow on the edge of the seat both bouncing, tumbling to the floor horse and rider crashing to the earth.  
“Oh! Son!” Neve said trying to remain calm, blinking rapidly, sitting beside him holding his hands firmly, despairingly watching his fixed stare at the settling pillows. “Breath deep, relax.”  
Gurd’s visions always came directly at him as though with the sole purpose of burning every last, minuscule movement into his brain. His eyes were lenses, his brain the camera, his mind the film, and his victims were single-mindedly determined to make him remember, preserve for all eternity what he had done. Swiftly, incredibly rapidly coming at him, but not so fast any detail was blurred. Until the last moments when there was no movement, no terror, or fear, no anger in their eyes. Just sheer, naked horror as though Gurd was Death. It did not matter if the combat was so close he could feel the breath of the man on his face, or if a youth was riding full-tilt shooting a pistol at him from yards away. Gurd could see his reflection in the obsidian-black, dilated pupils of their eyes in their last moment of life. A hideous, horned, yellow-eyed monster.  
“Sāman!” Gurd gasped through clenched teeth.

Chapter Four  
Mischief and Yoga

Eyes open, Ethan Dewar’s face glowed with bright inquisitiveness moments after he popped out of the womb in the spring of 1981. Submerged in the hot tub on the deck beneath redwoods north of San Francisco, his mother, Louisa, was listlessly trying to focus on the glamorous video of Mikhail Baryshnikov’s performance of the Don Quixote ballet. When the self-styled midwives, Nell and Elsa, lifted the newborn from the tub and cleaned out his ears they were positive Ethan immediately quieted so he could hear the music. According to Elsa, the expression of curiosity never entirely left his face from that instant as though his inner ear was attuned to some melody they couldn’t hear. Nell agreed but thought there was more to it than that.  
Any unwary person looking down at the bassinet into Ethan’s brilliant, green eyes risked being seized by them like a Star Trek tractor beam. Each such individual felt inexorably dragged in and compelled to start explaining the universe and their purpose or role in it. It was a neck-breaking, mind-bending experience for most people who would have willingly provided explanations to an infant if they knew how. Elsa and Nell swore Ethan issued the unspoken challenge explicitly to elicit the guffaws and chuckling bafflement his expression provoked.  
“Music to his ears!” eyes twinkling, Elsa proclaimed when the infant grinned toothlessly at the sound of the chuckles.  
Soon after learning to walk and talk at the same time, Ethan regularly contested the explanations for abstract things like Justice, which he learned from Granddaddy Dewar, tread hot on the heels of Mischief. Loch Dewar got the distinct impression Ethan believed his grandfather was making things up.  
“Look at the way he’s suspiciously narrowing his eyes at me!” Loch exclaimed, eyes wide brows raised imploringly holding his arms and hands out to Nell and Elsa (Louisa had absconded soon after her body was fit to be seen on the L. A. beaches).  
“Maybe you should consider your manner of explanation, Loch,” tall, slender Nell suggested, eyes direct, brows pulled together. Squatting, elbows resting casually on thighs hands dangling wearing her usual plaid shirt, blue jeans, and cowboy boots, she said, “Get down on Ethan’s level like this. Quit towering over the boy, cut the rhetoric and gesturing like Cicero or Caesar?”  
“Yeah!” stout, roguish Elsa agreed jaw thrusting, head tilting forward, crossing her blue-gray eyes. She tugged at the loose, khaki shirttail hanging over her forest-camouflage slacks, pockets bulging, military boots scuffed. “Don’t act like a grandfather. Be a granddad. Empathize don’t patronize.”  
Granddaddy Dewar owned a modest, two-story, redwood-shingle bungalow. Its size belied the extravagant fashion the spacious interior housed the collection of sturdy, arts-and-crafts furniture, colorful ceramics and textiles, and prints of California panoramas. Elsa and Nell’s comments were welcome but their advice on décor was not appreciated.  
Granddaddy also didn’t appreciate Ethan’s constant need to explore the flavors, scents, colors, and textures of objects and furniture for their information content and value. Loch had not considered the curiosity of a child when he purchased the tables and chairs of the Scottish designers George Jack and Bruce James Talbert or the Gustav Stickley cabinets. The higher Granddaddy placed the Rookwood and Newcomb pottery, and the mica-shade lamps of Dirk van Erp the higher Ethan climbed.  
Ethan was disgusted with the lack of tactile rewards when he finally reached the dramatic Albert Bierstadt prints California Redwoods and Yosemite Valley high on the walls. Standing on the back of a Talbert chair, Ethan was offended by the smoothness of the photograph of John Muir. The man’s beard felt nothing like Granddaddy’s.  
“Down! Òganach!” Granddaddy had a thunderous voice enough to scare the bejesus out of a toddler tottering high off the floor, but not frightening enough to deter Ethan’s insatiable curiosity.  
Ethan often found himself confined by Justice to the lower redwood deck layered with an assortment of heavy pads used by wrestlers and gymnasts to mitigate impacts on hard surfaces. Ethan scrutinized Granddaddy gingerly lifting his computer and business phone out the window of his study onto the lawn furniture safely ensconced within the sturdy, steel playpen on the deck. Exasperated by his confinement and resigned to his grandfather’s watchful eye, Ethan tumbled among the horde of indestructible toys tasting and smelling like the same dull, durable plastic of the pads.  
If Ethan fell in with Mischief during inclement weather, he got the opportunity to explore the information potential of the three bedrooms, upper deck, and child-safe bathroom door on the second floor. During the day he was rarely up there where there were more windows and less valuable clutter than on the ground level. Ethan liked the deck view.  
Unable to dislodge the sturdy gate at the top of the stairs, Ethan squeezed through the deck balusters and hopped to the garage roof. It didn’t matter to him if it was chilly and foggy outside. Slithering down a drainpipe, plotting to drive away in Granddaddy’s black, 1981 Mercedes 2000.  
“Down! Bairn!” Granddaddy Dewar had countless names for a young child in Old English and Scots-Gaelic. Ethan was uncertain who or what he was until the nanny moved in.  
#  
“The house and garage are constructed to withstand the jolts, and jerks of California earthquakes,” Granddaddy explained gesturing smiling to a lady as they strolled around the lawn shaded by Sequoias. “And, of course, no tsunami could get this far inland.”  
Keeping quiet, minding his manners as instructed, Ethan innocently listened and watched during this tour of the property with the applicant for nanny. He toddled along holding Granddaddy’s hand mulling over the explanation of an au pair. He was fascinated by the oddly smooth tone and pleasant timbre of Granddaddy's voice.  
The winning applicant, forty-four-year-old Pearl Rosenthal, was a scholar suited to home-school a spirited, curious child. She had recently retired from the San Francisco Unified School District where she served on the dietitian staff for twenty years. She also was a certified athletic trainer and tutor for high-school-age girls and taught Hatha yoga classes in her spare time. Descended from a long line of San Francisco Jews, Pearl dedicated a lot of her time to the health and welfare of children in the Bay Area but avoided memberships to organizations devoted to the same causes. She was not a political person and she was weary of life in the city.  
Pearl was not in the least intimidated by Granddaddy’s towering, brawny physique, rugged features, and long, bushy, red beard. She was a good friend with Loch’s closest neighbors and Ban-dias (Scots-Gaelic for godmothers), Nell, and Elsa, both retired high school wrestling instructors for girls. The same-sex couple had known Dewar for years and confided to Pearl the wife and daughter had been shiftless trollops.  
“Both of them ran off the minute their child was born,” robust, buzz-cut Elsa, eyebrows arching head lowering, divulged in a whisper. “The daughter never married probably swallowed up by Hollywood like a baleen whale gulps plankton—silently.”  
Ethan allowed Pearl in the house but kept a suspicious eye on her at the beginning. He let her in because his Ban-dias assured him in conspiratorial whispers it was a first-rate idea. He figured they carried more weight in matters about women and au pairs than Granddaddy.  
To Ethan, Pearl didn’t look much a wrestler, like Elsa and Nell, even though she was always barefoot. She was slim and preferred pastel, loose cotton dresses printed with flowers, birds, and butterflies. She was as tall and stately as Ban-dia Nell, but Ethan decided Pearl’s dark hair parted in the middle was too long, her delicate scintillating jewelry disadvantageous for grappling and tussling. Pearl had a good grip but nothing like callused Ban-dia Elsa’s.  
The look in Pearl’s brown eyes was easy-going, not hard like a combatant’s. Ethan suspected he could relax around Pearl unlike being near Elsa who was prone to tackling him. Pearl’s skin was soft, and she smelled like food.  
Pearl taught Ethan to read, write, and do math using cookbooks and measuring cups and spoons. He learned ovo-lacto meant no meat, but Pearl’s spinach lasagna, vegetable Kichdi, shakshooka, and parve cholent were irresistibly delicious, smelled wonderful.  
Ethan was keen to be in the kitchen with Pearl. He enjoyed making granola, mixing the batter for whole-wheat bagels, matzo, buns, pasta, and pitas, and pouring the warm milk into the little jars to make yogurt. Ethan loved the sensation of mixing hummus and other stuff with his fingers.  
“Everything tastes better after you have a hand in it, Ethan,” Pearl whispered confidentially with a smile eyes sparkling licking her fingers.  
Ethan discovered yoga was best on the lower deck under the sunshine while the symphonies of Felix Mendelssohn or Sir Granville Bantoch were on high volume. Eyes wide, he listened to Pearl’s explanations of balance, meditation, and metabolism. He occasionally giggled when she applied sunscreen to his skin and pointed out the locations of his internal organs and the seven chakras. Some were in ticklish places.  
“Ethan, you have the whitest skin,” Pearl commented affectionately eyes searching for the slightest flaw finding none. “Just like your redheaded Granddaddy.”  
Ethan finally gave his permission for Pearl to move in after a couple of weeks. The previous trickle of classical music of Scottish and English composers transformed into a gentle flood from the speakers in every room and both decks. The heavy operas of Wagner virtually vanished replaced by the light operettas of Jacques Offenback. Ethan liked the change in the household ambiance when Dodah (Jewish for aunt) Pearl settled in.  
Mischief essentially faded away, and harmony blossomed beautifully as Pearl unpacked her PC, lifted Ethan onto her lap, and showed him how to use it. Ethan couldn’t resist shooting a triumphant glare at Granddaddy who never let him near his computer. The first thing Ethan wanted to see was the stuff his grandfather spent so much time looking at on his computer.  
“Well, sweetheart,” Pearl sighed ruefully pursing her lips twisting her mouth to the left brows lowering. “There’s not much of interest there.”  
Ethan agreed after viewing the bewildering lists of numbers and symbols and the charts, tables, graphs, and diagrams. Dodah Pearl sounded as self-assured as she did in explaining the value of ovo-lacto vegetarianism and yoga, but Ethan sensed she lacked the same enthusiasm in her explanations of the stock market. He liked to listen to her talk, her smell of celery, onions, and garlic, the bright images of daffodils and bees on her dress and her touch so Ethan sat quietly.  
He awoke to the laughter of Granddaddy, the sight of him grinning and leaning back in his chair at his desk. A click at his ear and a simultaneous, fleeting flash of light must mean he was still in Pearl’s lap and she was taking pictures. Dodah Pearl made a lot of pictures.  
“Come here, Ethan Loch Dewar,” Granddaddy Dewar boomed warmly eyes smiling beckoning with a wave.  
Ethan hopped down, ran across the floor, and crawled up into Granddaddy’s lap. He glanced at the computer screen to see the same stuff that was on Dodah Pearl’s. He twisted to grin for the camera just as the first notes of Mozart’s opera, The Magic Flute, drifted from the sound system.  
#  
Loch suddenly cashed in his chips in 1987 at the age of sixty-four. Pearl believed the ever-deepening stress of shorting stock index futures against stock portfolios undoubtedly contributed to his fatal heart attack.  
When she explained the stress of Mischief and old age as the culprits in the demise of Granddaddy, Pearl didn’t get the feeling Ethan was sad. She sensed beneath his expression of puzzlement Ethan was angry. Pearl suddenly realized he was mad at the injustice of being deprived of his grandfather.  
“Not fair,” Ethan muttered, his little cupid’s mouth pouting.  
As executor of Loch’s estate Pearl became the guardian for Ethan and his trust funds. Horrified at the economic trends set by Reaganomics and upset by the behavior of the market, Pearl liquidated everything she could convert as soon as she was in full control of the estate in September 1987. She deposited most of the money in numerous off-shore accounts in Ethan’s name in October just before the stock market cardiac arrest. Ruefully, Pearl considered the same prolific, portfolio-insurance tactics that killed Loch were responsible for the market crash.  
Pearl was an energetic person who felt obligated from the beginning of her tenure to raise the boy right. To Pearl, that meant leaving no time for the devilry associated with idleness. After Loch’s death, she continued all year round to tutor Ethan with a traditional curriculum so if she experienced some disability or died he would be prepared to enter a public school.  
Ethan was fascinated with Pearl’s grown-up explanation for her tutoring agenda. Sitting in Granddaddy’s chair at the age of six, Ethan watched and listened with rapt attention while she delivered preliminary explanations for educational, religious, and social systems. When she finished, Ethan raised his hand.  
“Yes, Ethan?” Pearl asked happily, reaching to lower the volume of the sound system.  
“Miss Rosenthal, please explain what a system is?” Ethan asked bright eyes inquisitive pencil poised over the pad. He briefly wondered why Beethoven had named the melody floating softly in the air “Silence”.  
“Yes, of course, that would be a more appropriate way to begin our lesson,” Pearl smiled brightly briskly removing the whiteboard to a chair and placing a fresh one on the stand.  
“Yes, Ethan?” Pearl, mouth partially open head turning slightly to the right keeping eye contact, responded to Ethan’s raised hand after finishing her clarification.  
“Miss Rosenthal, please explain civilization?” Ethan requested business-like flipping a page in his notebook.  
“Sweetheart,” Pearl started but stopped as Ethan arched his left eyebrow glancing down at the shoes she was wearing reminding her they were emulating a regular classroom.  
“Today’s lesson is about the student’s orientation to the present universe,” Pearl smiling tenderly, patiently, tilting her head forward slightly.  
“There are constraints on people’s time,” she said pointedly, manner and tone intimating household and garden chores and a drive in the car to go shopping. “Remembering things is better if we keep to one theme in space and time. Explaining civilization is more of an exploration of the past.”  
#  
Pearl primed Ethan for encountering children of other religions by explaining Granddaddy Dewar’s Atheism, her brand of Judaism, and the basics of the other major religions. When he inevitably posed questions beyond her knowledge of faith-based systems, she sat with him at the computer searching for the answers.  
Thoughtfully, she agreed when a few weeks later Ethan concluded all religions had one thing in common: the belief in at least one non-corporeal world, a netherworld. Face uncharacteristically somber and serious, he stated matter-of-factly his beloved Granddaddy was in one of those places even though he had been an Atheist. Ethan explained he believed Granddaddy probably had a Celtic harp, too. Most probably a magical one.  
Wondering if he might be musically inclined Pearl bought Ethan a ceramic, pendant-ocarina, and one for herself. Together, they learned to play, but he never expressed an interest in other more complicated instruments after he graduated to a double-chambered ocarina. He had an exceptional ear for music, and in his mind, Ethan composed arrangements for the ocarina from the wide selection of Pearl’s and Granddaddy’s classical music. He gave up on trying to read music because the concept was even harder to grasp than reading English and doing math. Pearl thought definitions provided for musical terms and musical scores didn’t have enough nuance were too limited, concise for him.  
Pearl adored Ethan and loved the challenge of stimulating his young mind. However, she was wise enough to recognize he needed time alone in his sandbox or puttering in the garden under the Sequoias and blue, storybook sky.  
Ethan was aware Dodah Pearl kept an eye on him even during these periods mulling over his lessons. He took pleasure in quietly singing wordless, wandering songs during these solitary activities. He was mindful of the raccoons and the does and their fawns creeping up from the forest to the edge of the lawn listening attentively to his voice, or tunes on his ocarina.  
When Ethan sensed Dodah Pearl was not spying on him, he took stealthy forays into the forest attempting to understand animals and commune with them in their natural surroundings. Discovering these excursions, Pearl silently rebuked herself for her fear of meeting Sasquatch face-to-face in the woods. She insisted on accompanying him on future explorations.  
Ethan shivered with anticipation shopping for outdoor gear and books illustrating the tracks and scat of different animals, weather patterns and forecasting, survival techniques, and first aid. After Ethan selected the books and gear in the bustling store among so many people who commented on how adorable how angelic he was, hikes became a regular part of their life.  
Pearl didn’t comment on his choice of books in which the narrator was often an animal instructing humans about the ways of the wild. Ethan’s preferred bedtime storybooks were filled with magical, talking animals, and mythical creatures. He was enthralled by The Firebird and Swan Lake ballets but Pearl noticed he invariably fell asleep after the closing act.  
Pearl and Ethan frequently paused during their excursions to rest and absorb the beauty, or tranquility of a particular grove, clearing, sparkling stream, or cloud formations. Pearl took these opportunities to teach Ethan a new yoga position and encourage meditation amidst the serenity and silence of nature.  
Pearl would have been shocked to see the visions of his inner eye during his meditations. She did not believe his young brain was capable of actualizing the rhythms necessary to experience an alternate reality, an objective she understood some yoga practitioners pursued.  
For Ethan, the surrounding woodland might shift subtly into a woodland of twinkling, giant bonsai trees and lustrous, dwarf redwoods. In his mind, dazzling European unicorns, radiant Chilean chonchon, and flickering, smoky Hindu jinn roamed the forests. In the sky prismatic birds of paradise and iridescent parrots fluttered and chattered and glittering, jeweled insects buzzed.  
A diffuse light filled the fresh, crystalline air but Ethan could determine no point in the aureate sky to indicate the sun as the source. The wondrous, euphoric experiences were accompanied by sensations within his body as well as in the air of Tchaikovsky’s “Waltz of the Flowers”, the more mellow movements of Beethoven’s pastoral Symphony Number Six, or Vivaldi’s The Four Seasons.  
A smile of enchantment and fascination spread across his face at the animate and inanimate creatures and immobile objects. Each glittering, gleaming, or glimmering in varying degrees of luminosity and intensity of color. Ethan believed all the light was gliding from within the flowers and creatures, none of it reflecting from an external source.  
After some brief contemplation, Ethan concluded the chakras of each creature must regulate, or measure the outward current of the energy streaming from within their bodies. No skin or other types of membrane to restrain the flow was visible. The sparkling, coruscating surface of the animated creatures resembled the roiling, fluid, and gaseous surface of the sun he’d seen in astronomy programs. Ethan noticed the motion was much less dramatic in the gently glowing, bioluminescent plants, not so bright, more like the movement of the delicate, graceful Northern Lights.  
Pearl was pleased to see his serene smile in the soft, dappled light of the forest when his meditation was concluded. She understood he must have his reasons for not sharing the nature of his experiences.  
#  
Clowns captivated Ethan when Dodah Pearl took him to his first circus on his tenth birthday. Laughing so hard his belly hurt, Ethan watched the antics and pranks, absorbing the response of the audience around him. The exhilarating experience filled Ethan with a delightful, tingling light similar to watching performances of The Barber of Seville or The Marriage of Figaro. Sharing his laughter with the boisterous crowd under the big tent excited him. It was a little scary like being swept up and carried by a shining ocean wave on a sunny day at the beach with his buddies.  
Eyes popping mouth agape, Ethan watched as a tall, round, flamboyant clown was hoisted overhead by the exuberant crowd and passed around the arena. He had never seen such a spontaneous, intimate demonstration of appreciation for a performer. He felt a compulsion, a craving to create waves of laughter, whistles, and hoots and ride the surf of arms and hands.  
“Yahooooo!” Ethan’s enthusiasm leaped the moment they arrived home that afternoon from clowning to the new computer Elsa and Nell had waiting for him. They all sat around the table on the deck next to the old, steel playpen under the blue skies and puffy, white clouds while Ethan explored the budding internet.  
In the following days, Pearl encouraged him to find websites approaching subjects from a holistic, systemic perspective. Her suggestions and guidance led him to the intriguing phenomenon of cycles. Seated together murmuring, eyes flashing, fingers pointing at the screen they explored the patterns of the predictable, orderly (negentropic) cycles such as the tides and the seasons. They also studied the random, entropic events in nature, powerful volcanic eruptions, earthquakes, and droughts, and how these affected the environment and the creatures depending on it.  
Ethan viewed the negentropic cycles as harmonious and entropic cycles as disharmonious, discordant. To him, cycles were like musical compositions approaching a resolution somewhere, sometime in the future, masterful, continuous, unfinished classical symphonies.  
Pearl and Ethan studied the strength and force of past cycles in human attitudes and ways of life. They explored the histories of economic and political systems, and the chaotic effects of destructive, entropic cycles like famine and wars on civilization.  
Chin resting on fist, gazing at his reflection on the computer screen, Ethan began to image all these types of cycles as living phenomena experiencing birth, maturity, deterioration, and death. He speculated on their existence in the world of unicorns, chonchons, and jinns, the Netherworld.  
Ethan’s interest in the recursive nature of cycles enticed him into the study of algorithms in an abstract, sophisticated way more musical than cycles. Eyes glued to the screen fingers flying over the keyboard, he started formulating continuous algorithms. Just as corporate America was beginning to develop algorithms oriented around the patterns of cultural and social values of potential customers, Ethan geared his algorithms to the values of Nature and how to conserve it.  
Fingertips of one hand tapping lips, the other hovering over the keyboard, Ethan contemplated the dichotomy of nature and culture. He considered a mission to save the critical cycles in Nature from being interrupted, destroyed by industry and commerce. Ethan believed the capitalistic, corporate system could exist in harmony with the earth’s natural order. He believed it would be fun convincing, modulating, coaxing the greedy corporate world of his grandfather to convert to his philosophy. Ethan thought it would be fun just to upset the order of things as clowns did.

Chapter Five  
Clown and Hobgoblin

Ethan grew in leaps and bounds. His handsome, open face and dimpled grin appealed to just about everyone. His slightly flaring ears and modestly upturned nose hinted at an impish, mischievous character. The bold glint in his eyes was no longer merely curious but vaguely challenging. However, his behavior was always polite and considerate.  
“He kinda looks like the book cover illustrations of the character, Carrot, the night watchman in the Terry Pratchett fantasies,” Elsa, red-faced, blue-gray, Mohawk-hair bobbing, remarked one day wrestling Ethan down on the deck.  
“Yep,” said Nell, fading blond bob framing her solemn face big blue eyes also coming into view above Ethan. “Dead ringer.”  
“Well, now you mention it, you’re right,” Pearl said thoughtfully as her face appeared next to Nell’s over Ethan whisking her long hair behind her ears, drawing back a little, brown eyes intent.  
“Wanna be a law enforcement officer when you grow up?” Elsa huffed tone reproachful eyes scornful tugging at her camouflage sweatshirt sweat beading on her buzz-cut freeing Ethan from her grip.  
“I want to be a clown,” Ethan replied, grinning shyly his already flushed face growing crimson spreading up into the scalp under his pale red hair.  
Pearl arranged for Ethan a sort of clown preschool program, gradually developing into lessons in juggling, gymnastics, acrobatics, ballet, mime, ventriloquism, and acting. When Ethan gave animated performances at home for his godparents, brawny Elsa would wrestle him to the weathered plastic pads on the deck bringing him down to earth. Stately Nell would yell encouragement giving Ethan advice on offensive and defensive tactics.  
“Yee! Haw! Watch out for her big boobs,” Nell shouted emphatically from the hot tub, pounding the swirling water with her fist. “She knows how to use ‘em. She’ll smother you, Ethan! Don’t let her get your head between ‘em! Ethan!”  
Pearl scheduled the classes so the lengthy excursions into town in the Mercedes would be economical both regarding time and money. She always remained with him in the gym, or studio to ensure his instructors didn't attempt any inappropriate behavior.  
Often they treated fellow students and their parents, or the instructors to lunch or dinner, and visits to museums, movies, botanical gardens, the beach, theater, ballet, opera, and classical concerts. When it became evident the anticipation of these lessons and outings triggered a marked enthusiasm in his behavior Pearl established a period of yoga before leaving home. Accompanied by soothing classical melodies, the sessions calmed Ethan.  
#  
Most of the time Ethan could hear a symphony, sonata, concerto, or some other form of classical music playing during his visits to the Netherworld, which he thought of as Mag Mell, the name Celts gave their Otherworld. Even when he could not succinctly hear the composition he sensed it in his mind’s ear.  
Pearl once lectured on the philosophical concept of musica universalis, the Music of the Spheres, and Pythagoras. Ethan thought he must be experiencing something like that even though there were no visible celestial bodies, no evidence of a universe in the aureate sky during the day or the indigo night atmosphere.  
Ethan believed the music was a narration of the ambiance changing, shifting with the mood or theme like weather systems. Sometimes the shift was abrupt, a dramatic Brahms symphony interrupting a serene Beethoven sonata or the reverse. A soothing Romantic nocturne might elevate into a lively Baroque folk dance. The possibilities were as infinite as the changing weather in the physical realm.  
Ethan realized when his consciousness withdrew from his physical body during meditation to join the corresponding consciousness of his life force in the Netherworld the two morphed into his avatar. He was aware avatars possessed characteristics of both dimensions, most notably the presence of visible skin, or membrane veiling the roiling surfaces.  
During his earliest experiences alone watching from places of concealment, Ethan eventually concluded life forms must consist of a relatively cool type of plasma not known to exist in the corporeal world. Judging from the more softly glimmering patterns of flow in their pastel, opaque forms the sentient plants had one primary energy source, or chakra, which was just below the surface of the ground.  
Touching the glowing plants, which often was unavoidable in the rainforests caused a tingling like a tiny shock to spread into Ethan’s avatar. The sensation was neither pleasant, nor unpleasant, but at the point of contact, he could watch a white, phosphorescent glow bloom on his skin for an instant. He quickly learned the longer the tingle and glow lingered the greater potential for rashes and itches.  
The often vividly colorful, animate creatures Ethan observed seemed to have within their bodies the seven chakra energy centers. He avoided touching the glittering, brightly colored animals he encountered. Ethan was sure any contact would be arousing, or energizing in some manner. He noticed they kept a respectful distance from him and there was no contact between animated creatures, at least not that he ever saw. He seldom saw normal-looking people.  
During his lonely, furtive, early investigations of the Netherworld, Ethan discovered all the creatures, animate and inanimate had one thing in common: their surfaces represented in full view the fundamentally transitory nature of their being. They could not hide the processes of their psyche’s establishing individuality during their developing years and endeavoring to maintain the meaning of their identity throughout maturity. The hues, patterns, and speed, or force of the motion governed by the inner seven chakras and evident on their exterior, revealed nuances in the long-term development of each being.  
Ethan often glimpsed the larger patterns in the cycle of an individual’s life interrupted or enhanced tinted by splashes of short-term moods. He thought the Netherworld was a mental-health specialist’s dream come true. Ethan decided he’d never acquire the skill or patience to analyze the nuances like a psychiatrist. However, he remained unequivocally fascinated with all creatures. He was relentlessly curious about what motived them what made them tick how they fit into the scheme of things.  
Ethan drank the water but never ate any netherworld food, raw or prepared. He had no idea how the edibles tasted. Fragrances, odors, and aromas were absent or faint in all the realms except in the spring when they were riotous. As in the physical world, Ethan relied principally on sights and sounds for his critical sensory input.  
His understanding of the Netherworld expanded through his travels with Puck, Ethan’s first guide. The fairy-hobgoblin-shapeshifter found Ethan at a young age in rather extenuating circumstances and took pity on him.  
Ethan was strolling merrily playing on his pendant ocarina along with Ponchelli’s “The Dance of The Hours” thoroughly permeating his mind and senses—the musical atmosphere of the Netherworld. His eyes roaming an extensive field of tall, glowing sunflowers humming with droves of bees harmonious, peaceful. His bright, twinkling eyes captivated by the luminous blossoms and shimmering bodies and the glittering, buzzing wings of the gem-like bees, Ethan wondered if the people referred to these plants as sunflowers since there was no sun in their sky. There was the typical diffuse brightness overhead but no sun and no shadows.  
Ethan walked into what he believed to be a sudden stiff breeze and leaned into it. The next thing he knew, he was inside a skintight, transparent, airless capsule. He remained upright, hands and ocarina mashed against his face but could not draw a breath, or move a muscle except those in his eyes. Staring around wildly, Ethan searched for the source of his captivity. Fleetingly, he wondered what Peter Pan would do in Neverland.  
Ethan suspected the lack of oxygen triggered his hallucination of a winged creature undergoing a continuous metamorphosis flying at him. Up close, the blur resolved into a glimmering, bald, little person hovering on large, sparkling, gossamer, insect wings like stained glass windows. The little guy had a pair of tiny spike-horns on his head and some iridescent, psychedelic tattoos on his arms and chest.  
The gleaming blue-green eyes glaring at him as though he thought Ethan was a dunce, he pointed to his right and jabbered. Unable to hear anything, Ethan rolled his eyes in frustration. The creature zipped away and Ethan watched from his peripheral vision as it lifted a huge, pitted, glossy-black boulder pitching it out of sight. The invisible force vanished. Ethan collapsed gasping to the ground.  
In another instant, tattoos flashing like emergency-vehicle lights, the little person buzzed around him in a circle making Ethan dizzier. The little guy’s stern expression of censure mingled with fascination as Ethan’s breathing slowed and his circulation flushed his skin.  
“New to these parts, Master Avatar?” the little person said in a sarcastic, lowland-Scottish brogue, half-lidded eyes gazing at Ethan with a mixture of intense interest and disgust.  
“It’s obvious?” Ethan inquired, laying in the green grass, weakly chuckling with relief.  
“My name is Robin Goodfellow,” Robin said suddenly cheerily hovering face-to-face in a position up-side-down from Ethan’s perspective glittering wings whirling tattoos flaring.  
“May I offer you my services as a guide?” Robin asked earnestly, voice level, a broad, encouraging grin spreading across his face eyebrows hopping up and down.  
“Puck?” The word popped out of Ethan like a cork from a bottle. Puck jerked his head sharply to his left with an expression strongly suggesting he didn’t like the nickname.  
“What’s this?” Puck asked pointing to his left, his small, round face returning to a stern glare.  
“Big flower field with a bunch of bees?” Ethan responded, blinking, eyebrows creeping up tentatively. His breathing finally returning to normal, his heartbeat slowing, continuing to rest on his back, ocarina in hands folded on his chest.  
“On the face of it, yes,” Puck agreed solemnly with a nod, twirling on whirling wings around 180 degrees, so he was right-side-up, tattoos no longer pulsing angrily. “But can you name the phenomenon created by such activity?”  
“Electric field,” Ethan stated quickly responding to the demanding tone.  
Frowning, fingering the ocarina nervously, Ethan cocked his head to the right puckering his lips studying Puck more closely. His appearance was different from the other creatures in the Netherworld, more ethereal like the image of Princess Leia projected by R2D2 in Star Wars. Holography?  
“Right! Smart lad!” Puck nodded the pitch of his voice rising with excitement an approving grin spreading ear-to-ear, perfect little teeth glinting and glistening. “And the boulder?”  
“Big rock full of iron,” Ethan replied, rubbing his chin, uncertain the term ‘meteorite’ was appropriate in a realm without celestial bodies as though the skies in the Netherworld began where the earth’s atmosphere ended.  
“Magnetic field!” Ethan quipped hurriedly in response to the question inferred by Puck’s raised eyebrows and wide eyes. “The meadow of flowers and buzzing bees create an electric field, and the large rock has a magnetic field extending all around it.”  
“Brilliant lad!” Puck chirruped bouncing, his whirring, dragon-fly wings transforming into fluttering, butterfly wings, blazing green on top iridescent blue on the undersides.  
“What do you get in the space where one,” Robin Goodfellow asked lowering his tone pointing simultaneously right and left then bringing his hands together as though holding a sphere, “overlaps with the other?”  
“Plasma storage space… a trap!”  
“Precisely!” Puck shrilled, tattoos beaming.  
“You’re an intelligent kid, but you need a guide,” eyes dancing merrily Robin explained with an expansive sweeping gesture with both arms. “Traps are all over the place. Some are less merciful than this one. The guy who set up this one likes to keep the flower seeds for himself.”  
Fluttering over to pluck three shiny seeds nestled among luminescent, golden petals, Puck began juggling in a three-ball shower. Grinning charmingly, he switched to a three-ball cascade, watching Ethan expectantly.  
“But, Mr. Goodfellow,” Ethan said apprehensively, biting his lower lip, raising onto his elbows crinkling his brow, “with all due respect, the stories I’ve read about you say you lead people into dangerous situations and leave them there.”  
“That’s what I do in the outer world,” Robin Goodfellow agreed, shifting to three-ball box, site swap, eyes remaining on Ethan.” I do the reverse here in the inner worlds.”  
Reluctantly, Ethan agreed to let Robin Goodfellow be his guide. During their travels over the years, Puck introduced him to his shimmering, fluorescent friends Coyote, Huëhuecoyötl, Raven, Br’er Rabbit, Papa Legba, Ogo-Yurugu, and others like himself. They all were alike in their colorful, vaporous, twinkling forms, and mischievous behavior. They were all instantly Ethan’s best buddies following him around enchanted by his accompaniments of the musica universalis on his ocarina. Like The Pied Piper Ethan thought.  
Ethan’s confederates showed him secret entrances to other dimensions. Puck revealed deep in a forest of ancient oak, hazel and hickory a clear, scintillating pool flowing placidly into an eerie, spectral cavern connecting Mag Mell to Ekera. His jackal’s coat shimmering like twilight, Ogo-Yurugu, directed Ethan to the heights of an escarpment dense with date palm, fig and sausage trees to a spectacular, thundering waterfall hundreds of feet high. Concealed not far below the sparkling, azure water cascading over its rim a cathedral-like cave extended from Ekera into Shipap. Conveniently, it happened to be under the same waterfall that veiled the exit from Mag Mell.  
Eventually, Ethan traveled from one dimension to another until he visited six domains. Ethan named each of the six realms he explored after the netherworlds in the order he remembered reading about them after Granddaddy Dewar’s death: Mag Mell, Ekera, Shipap, Mictlan, Naraka, and Kur.  
Ethan realized from his personal, secretive explorations the ambiance of each separate realm was subtly unique. He thought the perpetual, permeating classical music present in each of the six domains was distinctive. Although compositions similar in theme were often simultaneously audible in all six, there seemed to be subtle differences in pitch, dynamics, color, and aesthetic preferences for the sound of certain instruments. Ethan concluded all the animate and inanimate creatures, negentropic and entropic natural and the non-cyclic man-made phenomena of each realm created the distinguishing tone and timbre of their world, the musical atmosphere.  
The perspective and behavior of the inhabitants differed slightly from dimension to dimension in their universal pursuits of food, shelter, security, love, and, for those so inclined, beyond these basics to wealth and power. Ethan considered these distinctions in ambiance and behavior signatures of each domain’s culture, tradition.  
Their language was generally the same. Some accents were nearly incomprehensible at first, but Ethan’s ear was sensitive to meaning as well as tone.  
Most notable to Ethan were the variations in the sense of humor. The inhabitants of Ekera were not amused by the things people of Mag Mell thought hilarious. The folks of Kur could not relate to the type of humor sparking laughter in the other five dimensions. However, Ethan eventually met the challenges to make just about everyone everywhere laugh, bray, chuckle, chortle, snicker, or giggle.  
“See those critters over there?” Puck, hovering, narrowed eyes sliding to the right, asked in his schoolmarm manner one bright morning.  
Ethan was strolling with the hobgoblin in a lambent, glowing woodland on rolling, verdant hills along a glittering river. Puck was frolicking in the air his butterfly wings ablaze beating to the tempo of Strauss’s “The Blue Danube Waltz” permeating the atmosphere saturating Ethan’s senses.  
“Yes, of course,” Ethan replied, nodding, juggling gleaming, green acorns in a four-ball fountain.  
Ethan had learned to let Puck ramble when he was in the mood. The little hobgoblin had made it clear Ethan’s eagerly interjected questions were unwelcome often causing Puck to lose his train of thought. He usually got around to explanations to any inquiries Ethan could pose if Ethan just kept his mouth shut and listened.  
Ethan gazed at the pair of trotting creatures with the emerald heads, arms, and torsos of men, golden bodies of bulls, and amethyst wings of a swan. The cool plasma roiling in the two bodies like lava placidly surging from their depths.  
“Beings that appear to be normal folks in regular human form we call Clichés,” Puck said tattoos somberly pulsing gently in time with the waltz as he gracefully twirled adding in a confidential, low tone, “and there are very few of those around. Just about everybody has something funky boiling below the surface.  
“There’s a lot of diversity in folks here just as there is in the outer world of consciousness… Reality as folks out there like to call it,” Puck continued, rolling his eyes.  
“Here the deviations from the norm are more obvious,” Puck explained as he caught an acorn Ethan let slip. “Those two guys are not members of a different genus or species but belong to the family of humans. Part-human, part-beasts in the Netherworlds… we call them Riddles... like those two. Riddles may appear here as centaurs, satyrs, werewolves, mermaids, harpies, and such. Out in Reality, their corresponding human in the material world looks like a normal person.  
“Their outlandish shape here is an indication the physical counterpart in the conscious world suffers from emotional, or mental distress, or disorder,” Puck said easily engaging Ethan in four-count pass juggling, keeping eye contact. “They’re mixed up. The more disturbed individuals may have appendages of more than one animal or plant similar to the Venus fly-trap, or thorny cacti and roses. Such creatures usually favor one color of the spectrum possibly indicating an overwhelming, dominant emphasis by a single chakra, an imbalance in the spiritual-energy system.  
“The more severely afflicted individuals among the Riddles have blank eyes white as pearls. Stay away from the White-eyes!” Puck warned acorns twirling from his little hands, eyebrows lowering. “They are different from the poor Hollow-eyes who are people abusing drugs, prescription or otherwise.  
“And, of course, we have Hollow-eye Clichés, purely recreational types, not addicts,” Puck whispered solemnly, shaking his round head tattoos pulsing sluggishly, dropping an acorn swooping to regain it restoring the rhythm of their juggling.  
By ‘we’ Ethan understood his faithful guide to mean a separate order of beings including Puck himself. Glimmering leprechauns and personalities like Ogo-Yurugu, Papa Legba, and Br’er Rabbit were wholly and thoroughly imaginative. Their singular life force was mythological, sustained in every dimension only by the beliefs in them by people in the corporeal world. Ethan thought of them as Singularities, because they had no twin life force in the material world.  
“That creature,” Puck said face grave, mouth turned down at the corners, waltzing one late evening in a stately manner while pass-juggling glimmering pomegranates with Ethan. Powdery glitter fanning from his lapis lazuli, butterfly-wings in time with Strauss’s “Tales from the Vienna Woods”. He gestured to a giant, flaming-infrared serpent slithering on the far horizon, “is symbolic of a natural wildfire. Natural, entropic phenomena… catastrophes… like epidemics, tornados, earthquakes, and tsunami. Catastrophes usually appear in the form of a giant reptile, bird, or another type of animal. We call them Naturals.”  
“They experience a cycle of birth, maturity, deterioration, and death?” Ethan asked gaze shifting to the shimmering, crimson serpent undulating like a heatwave. The pomegranates swirling through his hands with the tempo of the waltz.  
“Correct!” Puck exclaimed waltzing, tattoos flaring. “The natural, negentropic, cyclic phenomena like the seasons can rarely be seen in a distinct noticeable form but the entropic phenomena are visible here.  
“They’re different from what we commonly call Unnaturals,” Puck explained grimacing, teeth bared, iridescent butterfly wings flapping breaking the rhythm dropping a pomegranate. “Unnaturals represent tragic, man-made phenomena such as GMOs, Cloning, Forestry, Agriculture, and Climate Change. The plants and animals are all pissed about that stuff. Let’s see… War, Slavery, Globalization, Religion, Bureaucracy, Genocide, Amazon, the Internet, Apple, Google, Facebook, Twitter are all Unnaturals. Unnaturals are as infinite as man’s imagination. The inventory of tragedy gets bigger all the time.  
“The life force of the Unnaturals,” Puck muttered scratching a horn as he recovered the rolling pomegranate, regaining the rhythm of the waltz and pass-juggling, “also expire here when the phenomenon ends in the corporeal world. Here in the Netherworld, Unnaturals appear in the form of sphinxes, chimera, medusas, and even more complex and hideous forms,” Puck briefly shivering, faltering in the air.  
“But,” Puck shook his head sadly, his wings drooping momentarily, tattoos blinking like a fluorescent light flickering out, flinging his arms up leaving Ethan to catch and cradle the pomegranates, “the havoc here in the Netherworld and the number of victims is equivalent to those in the material world. The consequences of their behavior continue after Unnaturals expire. The cycle they set in motion eventually fades sometime after their death.  
“Unnaturals here in the Netherworld,” Puck said plucking a glimmering pomegranate from Ethan’s arms, “can also symbolize the man-made imbalances in nature and among people caused by the activities of greedy corporations, like addictions to prescription drugs facilitated by the pharmaceutical industry and the effects of corporate-related pollution on the environment and people.”  
Puck munched as Ethan plucked a sprig of mint to sniff while gazing at the huge, scintillating serpent lighting up the indigo sky. He realized his knowledge of the companies producing medications, drugs and their effects on people was probably more limited than other people his age. He didn’t know anybody who took or used drugs.  
“I haven’t taken you to any of the places where Unnaturals are having a direct effect but sometimes they can be sensed at quite a distance,” Puck said, eyebrows knitting, considering Ethan thoughtfully. “Peaceful, harmonious locations like this are harder and harder to find.  
“I may be wrong, but I believe Clichés, Riddles, plants, and animals sense the music. The music is much more dramatic and discordant in places under the direct influences of an Unnatural,” Puck said, biting into the pomegranate spitting a seed, eyeing Ethan carefully before adding, “Musicians like yourself often are more sensitive to the ambiance of a place, detecting distant discord and approaching changes than other folks. You’re like animals that can sense a storm coming or an earthquake about to happen.  
“Let me think,” Puck sighed, “Clichés, Riddles, White-eyes, Hollow-eyes, Naturals, and Unnaturals. I think that’s about all the kinds of folks and animated stuff.”  
Chapter Six  
Stramash and Mission

Shortly after Ethan turned seventeen, at one hundred ninety pounds and six-foot, he quit the clown troop performing at private parties and public events. At a surprise birthday at Agate Beach Park, juggling beach balls, reveling in the cheers and laughter near the end of his performance, Ethan in an airborne, swirling pirouette felt bursting with energy. His exhilaration launched him twirling into the sky a waterspout out on the sea achieving dizzying heights of swirling, breathless ecstasy. He awoke suffocating in the dregs of a dark ocean filled with stinging jellyfish, profoundly depressed.  
His family, Dodah Pearl, Ban-dias Elsa, and Nell managed to wrestle Ethan from bed back on his feet to the sound of Hamish MacCunn’s Land of the Mountain and the Flood after two days under the covers pillows over his head. Ethan was surprised they were suddenly more fascinated than ever about his progress on his algorithms. He listened over a breakfast of omelets, home-baked, whole-wheat bagels, and fresh-squeezed orange juice on the deck while Nell explained one of Granddaddy Dewar’s old buddies, Luke MacDonald, was interested in Ethan’s algorithms hoping to come over and take a look.  
“Why?” Ethan asked, eyebrows arching, glancing up to the blue sky at a puffy, white cloud resembling a ship moored peacefully to the branch of a Sequoia tree.  
“He’s an environmentalist,” Nell replied, eyes direct, lips pursed, shoulders shrugging.  
Ethan regarded her as he sipped his juice. Nell had transformed from the stately, retired wrestling instructor now looking more like an elegant dame of the theater. He figured she was sixty-something, white hair in a short wedge-cut, natural pearls at her ears, long scarf the same blue of her eyes, simple silver ankle-length dress, the Merrill-Strep mouth.  
“Luke was once like Loch,” Nell said with a touch of a smile adding a few drops of brandy to her coffee, “always lookin’ to make a buck on the stock market. He did, big time but now he’s flipped to the Green side. Investment portfolio all Green. He has grandchildren, wants to leave them in a better world when he goes.”  
“He’s a member of the Sierra Club, Nature Conservancy, all that stuff but he wants to see some progress before he dies. You need a haircut, Ethan,” Elsa said merrily rubbing her hand over her gray, buzz-cut pushing her stout figure from her chair. “Hold him down, Nell! We’ll see if there’s any marrow in those big bones!”  
“No,” Pearl protested. “Ethan’s taking a sabbatical from clowning. He can let his hair grow. I want to see the color. It’s pretty, like peaches, not red, not blond.”  
“I’m not talking about his head!” Elsa boomed grinning, gray eyes dancing, stomping one maroon, alligator cowboy boot on the deck. “It’s his body that needs a trim. Look at him! He looks like an orangutan.”  
“Be nice, Elsa,” Nell said rising sweeping gracefully gathering the breakfast dishes.  
“I am being nice, Fairy Godmother!” Elsa retorted earnestly, baggy jeans rippling turning from Nell to Ethan.  
“We’re having lunch with Luke down at Scoma’s. Wanna come? Henry Huntsman, Saville Row, tailors everything for him even his boxers. You and Luke can compare Mercedes. Wear ascots. Smoke pipes,” Elsa said adjusting her Clint-Eastwood poncho and ammunition-belt choker, sweetly smiling canting her head to the side like talking to a toddler.  
“Thanks,” Ethan said chuckling, a flash of strong, white teeth, padding to the deck railing juggling almonds, setting the nuts out for the squirrels,” but I’ll stay and do some work on the algorithms. Help Pearl prepare for dinner if you want to invite Mr. MacDonald up?”  
“That’d be nice,” Pearl nodding fingering the fine gold chain around her neck suspending a single white diamond amid the profusion of jasmine blossoms on her blouse, sipping the last of her orange juice laced with Vouvray. “We can grill veggies out here if the weather holds. Shish kebab with a choice of glazes, Brie sourdough toast with garlic and mushrooms. Riesling. Strawberry shortcake with homemade Grand Marnier gelato. How’s that sound?”  
Watching the three women move around the table chatting in the morning sunlight, Ethan tried to remember how many bedtime stories had three witches, three goddesses, three fairies stirring up mischief, meting out justice.  
#  
Ethan gazed up at William Keith’s California, shoreline panorama, Land’s End under the low lighting of the mica-shade lamps in the study, and listened to the murmur of the three fairies out on the deck. The music of Tchaikovsky’s Sleeping Beauty ballet drifted from the sound system as he lowered his eyes to Luke MacDonald. The elderly man was sitting with his right elbow on the arm of the George Jack chair the fingertips of his hand lightly massaging his forehead.  
Luke had neatly trimmed, thick, white hair, parted high on the left and a long beard like Granddaddy Dewar’s, like John Muir’s. He had a narrow, rugged Scots face penetrating blue eyes. He sat straight in his chair, but Ethan got the impression Luke MacDonald was withering, a rose bush neglected. There were a few gentle folds but no crinkles in the soft fabric of his long-sleeve, white shirt and beltless khaki trousers. Perched on the back of the chair, Luke’s fawn, Giuseppe Borsalino fedora matched the hue of his Gucci loafers.  
“Ethan,” Luke sighed turning his contemplative gaze up from his lap to Ethan’s face, “I don’t know much about computers, size, speed or capacity of processors or RAMS and less about algorithms and codes. I’m to understand you’ve built your computer and you’ve formulated your algorithms and code?”  
“Yes, sir,” Ethan said returning Luke’s steady stare lips in a straight line green eyes candid.  
“Let me get this straight, Ethan. A program, or programs,” Luke quietly sighing raising his head, eyes blinking, brow crinkling, lowering his hand from forehead to lap, “continually feed a mountain of corporate activity-data such as what and how much materials—elements and chemicals—they use and what remains after production—and current environmental data of rivers, soils and air around their facilities and approved refuse disposal sites—into a continuously running algorithm and you’re asking the algorithm to provide an answer to the question: ‘what’s wrong with this picture’? The algorithm answers when an imbalance in air and water quality occurs and identifies the most likely candidate responsible for the imbalance?”  
“Correct. That’s the method in the simplest terms and that’s the objective but as I said getting all the data is a concern at this point,” Ethan replied with a broad, dimpled grin and a nod noting that Act Two of the ballet was coming to a close with the prince hacking through the tangled forest to the castle where Sleeping Beauty lay. “More data. Accurate and current data.”  
“And,” Luke grumbled clearing his throat fingers spreading in a gesture a fan unfolding leisurely, “your algorithms can forecast critical junctures for, shall we say, an appropriate corrective tactic? You ask the question where and when to conduct soils, air, and water quality tests so the results can be made public promptly. Then you implement a sequential set of actions or a single dramatic action designed to expose the behaviors of these corporations in a manner persuading them to change their ways? To quit committing injustices against the environment? That would be the solution to the problem? The corporations themselves? That’s the strategy?”  
“Yes, sir,” Ethan shifted forward at the hint of mischief in Luke’s voice creating the impression the elderly man was coming back to life, spring rains encouraging a bud from the thorns. “The decision on the nature of the tactic to be implemented is where the human element comes in after the algorithm designates the culprit and suggests a juncture for intervention. I should mention that I’m only concerned with the Western states. I may go national if I’m successful out here.”  
“War?” Luke inquired calmly, eyebrows creeping up tentatively a rosy color blossoming in his cheeks.  
Ethan shrugged, a lopsided grin forming, left eyebrow raised over the eye almost more gold than green. Conspiratorial.  
“You’ll need agents,” Luke said evenly, the glisten in his eyes flared morning sunlight on a dewy petal. “Humans have ways and means of gathering the sort of facts and documents not found in statistical studies and data sets. You’ll need an LLC for the payroll and benefits packages for your agents. Come to my home. Play a little Stramash with my Laddies. Please, call me Uncle Luke.”  
“Yes, sir,” Ethan broke eye contact briefly with Luke to cut his eyes toward the three fairies just as “The Wedding”, the third movement of the ballet began.  
#  
Ethan acquired his GED and entered the University of California at Berkeley that summer deciding on a non-degree curriculum. He enrolled in courses in ecology, environmental law, and philosophy.  
Continuing through the year, Ethan took classes in business law, political science, theater, and computer programming. During his time in the city, Ethan enjoyed more pragmatic and entertaining schooling in the evenings after classes at Uncle Luke’s baronial-style mansion in Pacific Heights playing Stramash.  
Ethan was instantly comfortable in the Scottish atmosphere of ‘The Castle’ even though the George III oak, rosewood, and mahogany furniture was less comfy than his grandfather’s arts-and-crafts furnishings. The casual placement of a few antique, wooden, or metal farm implements in most rooms softened the formality interjecting an earthy feel.  
He was sure the prosaic, rural scenes by the Scottish artists James Naire, James Patterson, and William Kennedy hanging on the walls were originals. He was most intrigued by the replicas of the miniature, Celtic, carved-stone monuments. During his tour of the house, Uncle Luke offered the generally accepted interpretations of the ancient figures and symbols on the markers.  
As a series of Scottish folksongs floated from the sound system, Uncle Luke explained the unique, liquor cabinet and billiards table in the game room were designs of the George III period but he’d not been able to identify the maker. The chess and checkers table-and-chair sets were from the same period.  
“Those are the songs of James Oswald, Chamber Composer to George the Third, Baroque Period. The Romantic Period, Anglo-Saxon composers will be following because The Lads fancy it, Ethan,” Uncle Luke said gesturing to the speakers then at a line of rough stone or wooden squares hanging on the dark-green wall under museum lighting, “These are replicas of the Celtic board games, Fidchell, found during archaeological excavations in Ireland. The crosshatched stone was recovered in Downpatrick, the partial wooden one in Waterford, and the complete one in Ballinderry. The wooden ones with peg holes were probably more common easier to make. No one knows the rules for certain. The king surrounded by his men in the center must get past an opposing force to one of the corner slots.  
“Scotch, Ethan?” Uncle Luke inquired turning to the bar.  
“Water, please, Uncle Luke,” Ethan replied nose wrinkling, chin jutting. He took a seat on a bench at a long, lustrous oak table lit by bronze candelabras at each end.  
“The most curious of all the Celtic games I know of,” Uncle Luke said placing two glasses on the table, “is Battle of the Trees.  
“You play as Gwydion, magician, and Lord of Knowledge,” Uncle Luke explained raising his snowy eyebrows opening two chilled bottles of Highland Springs sitting them on the table. “You’re responsible for animating trees of the forest on their final quest to capture three creatures of Mag Mell, the Celtic Underworld.”  
Searching the elderly man’s face bright blue eyes, Ethan wondered if Uncle Luke was also delving into the Netherworld. He couldn’t discern anything in the old Scotsman’s visage to indicate an ulterior motive for mentioning Mag Mell.  
“The curious part, Ethan,” the old man continued, lowering his eyebrows, looking down at Ethan thoughtfully, quizzically and rolling up the sleeves of his white shirt, “the game is believed to have been a form of divination for the Celts.  
“Battle of the Trees seems somehow analogous to algorithms,” Uncle Luke smiled, musing, brows knitting, reaching for cork coasters.  
“Those are replicas of the oldest known bagpipes,” Uncle Luke commented when he noticed Ethan gazing at the two instruments in glass cases on the wall under museum lighting. “Made with goat’s skin like the originals. Not easy on the eye and I imagine they sounded dreadful but dreadful may have been what they wanted.  
“I’ll run through the rules for Stramash before the Lads get here,” he said inhaling deeply, pulling an oak box from a compartment of the bar, setting it on the table, and sitting on the bench opposite Ethan.  
“This is an old set, not antique,” he muttered opening the box pulling out the oak board, pieces, marbles, and decks of cards. “The objective is to become the Muckle Stoater! You do that by getting your Laddies, these marbles, from the Dock to the Castle.  
“The Lads joining us tonight,” he said as Ethan poured his water watching Uncle Luke arranging the paraphernalia, “are Johnathon, William, Matthew, and James. Rascals! They want to learn more about your algorithms and objectives. If they like what they hear they might be interested in joining me to help you along the way.  
“Not financially, of course,” he said emphatically, blinking, looking up into Ethan’s eyes. “They all knew Loch and took his advice about working the market and profited almost as well as your grandfather. They’ve flipped to the Green side like me. They might offer sound advice on organizational arrangements, finding agents, that sort of stuff.  
“The two youngest, Matthew and William, sixties,” Luke said worriedly, shaking his head, inserting a forefinger into his beard to scratch his chin returning his attention to unpacking the box, “may blurt out some gobbledygook. Don’t pay them much attention. It’s just their version of Scots-Gaelic. I’ve tried to teach them, but they don’t have the tongue for the correct pronunciation.  
“Johnathon is the crafty one,” Uncle Luke said looking up from the array of items spread around him eyes piercing. “He’ll be the one to know all the ways and means of keeping your operation undercover, out of sight, possibly out of danger from retribution from The One Percent.”  
Ethan discovered the Laddies were as concerned as he about The One Percent of the wealthiest people in America who rigged the system for their benefit to the detriment of the country, its citizens, and the environment. The TOP, as Ethan called them, were always scheming to overcome, outwit, or manipulate the laws of economics as they typically operate in market economies. The Hunt brothers, the current symbol of TOP, and their silver and soy-bean-futures scandals were glaring examples, but others were not so easily detectable.  
Uncle Luke and the Lads were wealthy men, but they were not like TOP using lobbyists to convince elected state and federal legislators to fight for the reduction in the corporate tax rate, the transfer of public assets to the private sector, unfettered globalization, and the elimination of labor unions. Ethan grew confident Uncle Luke, and the Lads weren’t involved in rigging the system and were willing to help him with his mission to defame TOP and their enterprises.  
From the moment Ethan convinced The Lads of the efficacy of his algorithms, they plotted and planned over games of Stramash. Almost a year later, when he turned eighteen accessing his fortune, Ethan launched his non-profit LLC according to the schedule and protocols they established. He named it Carousel.  
The mission statement could have been winnowed down to two words: Environmental Justice. The logo was a simple abstract image of the scales of balance. Ethan chose Carousel’s motto from the works of Dr. Martin Luther King: “Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere”.

Chapter Seven  
Rag Dolls and Wee Clown

Pearl was unhappy after the holidays when Ethan appeared at the bungalow with his new purchase, a second-hand, 1990 Ford pickup truck, enthusiastically announcing his plans to pursue a career as a rodeo clown. She was worried she hadn’t adequately prepared him for the world, but he was nineteen and in control of his fortune.  
Although Pearl felt like weeping, she put on a good face, because she didn’t want the memory of his departure to be depressing. She remained calm, smiling, and supportive, nothing to encourage the elevation of his mood.  
About eighteen months ago, while preparing to attend classes, Ethan’s calming yoga sessions ceased to have much effect on his unpredictable episodes of escalating moods. A series of visits to various medical professionals culminated with a diagnosis of mild autism and Bipolar disorder, a recommendation Ethan keep a daily log, or diary providing clues about what triggered the episodes, and a prescription for a mood-suppressant. Ethan accepted the prognosis but didn’t like either proposal.  
Ethan purchased but didn’t take the medication because he felt it strangled his inspirations for the trademark comedic behavior his family, Uncle Luke, The Lads, and his classmates and teachers seemed to enjoy. He thought the drugs would redefine him make him dull, threaten his existential identity.  
Ethan decided against a diary because it made no sense if he didn’t record his travels in the Netherworld. His interactions in the non-corporeal dimensions were as crucial in guiding his life as those in the material world but documenting the experiences where someone might see was out of the question. The risk of a diary falling into the hands of his adversary, TOP, was unacceptable.  
“Love you, Dodah Pearl!” Ethan shouted voice soaring as he backed out of the driveway a few days after his announcement.  
Ethan was high with excitement on the way to the trade school in Tacoma, not far from the University of Washington where he had preregistered in psychology and earth sciences classes. He browsed at pawnshops and thrift stores for suitably worn and authentic-looking cowboy clothing and accessories, hard to find in his size. He was six foot two, two hundred twenty pounds of solid yet flexible muscle.  
During his time traveling, Ethan listened to country and western music stations on the truck radio. He practiced these melodies new to his ear on one of his pendant ocarinas suspended from a cord around his neck. His Berkeley classmates and beach buddies frequently called while he was driving or dining in truck stops, but he couldn’t infect them with his enthusiasm for experiencing life outside the Bay Area. However, he entertained them immensely with his tales of country culture and characters delivered with his new drawl.  
In the evenings in his forest camps under the bright stars, excited by the new challenge Ethan could not sleep, calmly resigning to this symptom of his disorder. At night he assumed a yoga position meditating on one anthropologist’s viewpoint rodeo was symbolic of Man establishing his cultural identity by dominating Nature. After hours of pondering the subject, he just couldn’t understand the rationale. Ethan thought if the animals were wild as in the ancient Roman contests in the coliseum between gladiators and African loins and buffalos the analysis was reasonable. He believed rodeo was symbolic of Man attempting to subdue unruly, domesticated elements of Culture analogous to lawless corporations, their stockholders, The Rig, and TOP—the Wall Street Bull, the metaphor for the most obtuse and greediest of all cultural institutions.  
#  
Ethan quickly picked up rodeo slang on his first day with the crew of the trade school. A Hooker was a bull handy with his horns and a Honker was rank and hard to ride. An Arm Jerker was a stout animal that bucked with a lot of abrupt power causing tremendous strain on the cowboy’s arm and a Blooper was a poor bucker. Head throwers tried to hit the rider with his head and Kissing the bull happened when the cowboy’s face met the back of the bull’s head. A Bad Wreck was a painful buck-off where the rider got horned or stomped after he was on the ground. Hung Up occurred when the rider was unseated but his hand was caught in the bull rope becoming a Rag Doll.  
Ethan more or less listened to the instructors during his first day in the arena with successive bulls. He learned more by watching the animals quickly recognizing the bulls moved within a range of characteristic rhythms. Ethan was quick to realize there was a point in the dance with the bull as his partner when he needed to abruptly stop following and start leading. Sometimes he imagined the dance a vigorous ballet, polka, jitterbug, hokey-pokey, or Highland fling rarely a sedate polonaise or quadrille.  
Ethan’s training in yoga and his lessons in gymnastics gave him a superb sense of balance, a high degree of flexibility and acrobatic agility. By the end of the second day, his instructors were trying to persuade him to appear a little less precise and proficient in dodging the bulls.  
They didn’t have a hard time convincing Ethan to address the theatrics of contact, controlling and maneuvering the beast, the things engaging an audience. Timing to create suspenseful entertainment was the second objective after achieving the ability to avoid the animal while distracting it away from the bull rider. Listening respectfully, Ethan grinned his cowboy hat bobbing as he nodded happily at the notion of someone encouraging him to behave theatrically.  
“Ernest Hemingway proclaimed Spanish bullfighting an art, Ethan,” one instructor yelled hands cupped around his mouth while Ethan was bouncing on his toes staring at the bull in the chute being prepared for release into the arena. “A deadly art, Ethan. This ain’t a whole lot different!”  
As the first week progressed, his coaches turned Ethan loose with a succession of their most irascible stock, shooting video useful in promoting their school. They decided not to use the footage of Ethan doing a twisting backflip over a bull charging head-on. Ethan had seen photographs of Cretan frescos and read about such acrobatic antics taking place during performances in ancient Crete where they practiced a kind of bull worship and wanted to try it himself. The exhilarating experience took him to the brink of an airborne bipolar episode.  
His instructors recorded the awarding of certificate for Ethan’s completion of the course with video and photographs, accurately capturing his fresh, wholesome, and candid character under his straw cowboy hat. They gave him a resounding letter of recommendation, and names, phone numbers, and email addresses for bullfighters considering apprentices. Ethan beamed brimming with anticipation.  
The night’s celebration roared with laughter, a sound refreshing, and rejuvenating Ethan as effectively as sleep. After a calming yoga meditation session back at his apartment, he slept that night for the first time since he left California.  
Dropping out of his university classes, Ethan traveled around to various colleges in Washington and Oregon interviewing with other student bullfighters someone he could partner with. He was disappointed to discover they were all occupied with classes and preparations for the rodeo finals a few weeks away in Casper, Wyoming. He attended rodeos as a spectator in the stands, but more often behind the scenes as a volunteer serving in some minor capacity in the pins, corrals, and stables. Ethan quickly became a favorite of stock owners and handlers, cowboys and cowgirls, and was well known and liked by the time of the finals in late June when he lost his virginity.  
Ethan had gravitated to his gay classmates at Berkeley and was comfortable with their company. He never felt any guilt for his attraction to men. Ethan never experienced any remorse for engaging in intimate encounters with other guys. However, he had grown up in a time and place dominated by HIV and was wary of going all the way.  
Ethan also felt the crowded, urban environment and smoggy skies of the coast just didn’t provide him the proper, harmonious ambiance for romance. Under the crisp, sharp, wide-open skies of Casper, Ethan sensed he found the right time and space for sharing the ultimate intimacy.  
Inspired to use his ventriloquist talents during his first encounter, Ethan endowed Wee Clown (his penis) with its own identity. After the first breathless, incredulous, wide-eyed shock from his bull-rider partner, Ethan was rewarded with gushing laughter, loving the mingling of laughter and lust.  
He discovered during that boisterous week in Casper and the licentious days following the contests bull riders enjoyed having something more than a spirited bull to ride. Ethan learned there were calf ropers who liked to be tied up and steer wrestlers who wanted to wrestle in more private circumstances.  
#  
Ethan spent the remainder of the summer apprenticing to one professional bullfighter in Washington, and another in Oregon. During this time he searched for Carousel agents and through his connections with The Lads he hired two people in each state. He had to assure all of them he was in no way connected with the people responsible for the 1998 arsons of the ski lodge under construction in Vail, Colorado, or the United States Forest Industries office in Medford, Oregon. Ethan convinced them Carousel would never engage in violence or vandalism to achieve environmental justice.  
He arranged a conference call with all four introducing them and reiterating the Carousel mission, their roll in its success, and his plans to find agents in the other western states. The conference call ended just as twinkling Puck popped onto the scene and tickled his ear with exciting news from The Interdimensional Spy Ring formed by Ethan’s Singularity buddies. When Puck vanished, Ethan was seized by his elevating mood ready to grab the bull by the horns and turn the TOP world upside-down.  
Ethan seized and silently stared at the plastic bottle full of his medication for a long time. He hated being suddenly gripped by his compulsion, but he loathed the detached, drifting sensation induced by the drugs. Finally, he hurled the bottle against the wall, but not with enough force to shatter it.

Chapter Eight  
Psycho Pomp and Brónach-tarbh

Ethan camped in the forests as he traveled around the Northwest. He enjoyed his evenings roaming communing with the wildlife. He often settled beneath the branches at the edge of a meadow under the starry sky or on the banks of a stream in a grove of pines, wherever he sensed a special harmony with his surroundings. Ethan preferred a standing yoga position for his meditations feeling more tree-like, part of the forest, Tree being a favorite.  
His yoga meditations often shifted into explorations of the Netherworld. Gathering data for his algorithms and searching for methods to more effectively implement the Carousel mission became his primary objectives. He tracked the schemes of TOP, hunted for clues to environmental injustices that were covered up, or concealed in the corporeal world. He searched for hints that might lead him to clear evidence of the identities of the people and corporations responsible for transgressions.  
Gaining confidence through his experience with Puck as his guide Ethan grew bold. In the Netherworld, he dressed as a psychopomp, an entity that escorted the dead to the Underworld. He frequently appeared as an undertaker in a black suit, oversized, glossy-red shoes, white shirt, and bolo tie. He sported a plastic, trick boutonniere the reservoir-water scented with perfume. When he felt daring and mischievous, Ethan further customized his avatar adding a black bowler, a glittering fringe of curly, rainbow hair, and a twinkling, pulsing red nose.  
As fortune would have it, Ethan’s early, burgeoning flamboyance was nipped in the bud. Back in the mid-nineties when he was still learning the basics of the Netherworld, Ethan was exploring the slopes of a mountain range in Kur, a predominantly hot, dry dimension of deserts. Usually, the agent of ambiance in Kur was Andalusian classical music popular from southern Spain across northern Africa into the Levant. The compositions involved lots of stringed instruments like baglamas, zithers and lutes, flutes, whispering percussion, drums, rattles, and finger cymbals.  
Towering, emerald cedars grew sparsely on the rugged, gleaming-white, limestone slopes of Kur mountain ranges where the melodies were rich and somber. Down in the deep ravines and broad gorges vast forests flourished in the faintly glowing, sandy soil. Beneath the luminous, fronds of the cedars few things other than sprinklings of twinkling mushrooms on the ground and lambent lichen on the trunks and boulders. Lichen favored the stone surrounding the dark entrances to the numerous caves and caverns creating dramatic contrasts against the darkness of the depths. Patches of the fungus-algae collective glimmered like gold or glistened like jade and topaz, amethyst, and amber.  
In one of these forests, searching for the owl he heard hooting, Ethan came upon a melancholy, solitary person about his age maturing into a Riddle. The creature had glossy, black horns of a bull-calf, the fluorescent, chartreuse, scaly head, and body of a man, paws of a lion, glittering vulture claws, and glistening, olive-green, serpent-head penis and tail. The surface of the Riddle’s vivid, flashing body and face churned and roiled like the surface of the sun the hair on his arms and paws like tiny, solar plasma-streamers.  
The Riddle’s sad face turned morose with contempt when Ethan attempted a joking introduction while casually juggling glittering, lichen-covered stones. The red-eyed serpent heads rocked from side to side hissing in a mockery of laughter. The creature looked at him sideways frowning with lids lowered over the flaming, yellow irises pupils like black sunspots.  
“Ass!” the Riddle snorted, eyes flaring. “You don’t know you are breaking all the rules?”  
“Rules?” Ethan’s grin faltering, arms wavering, pompousness like the glittering stones dropping to the ground.  
“Never wear footgear,” the Riddle said scornfully raising a glimmering clawed finger pointing, eyes staring down at the red clown-shoes.  
“Never wear scents,” he continued, teeth bared, grimacing contemptuously at the boutonniere, another gleaming finger uncurling.  
“Never carry or throw an object,” hurling a glare tangible as a volleyball to the face, a third shining, sharp claw pointing at the tumbling stones.  
“Nope,” Ethan responded sheepishly, eyeing the guy carefully, “didn’t know.”  
Ethan had never observed so much complexity in a Riddle’s form. He believed the predominant hues of green were an indication of a troubled heart chakra. However, as was true with all netherworld beings, Ethan couldn't decipher the patterns and nuances on the complicated patterns visible on the swirling surface. He believed the creature’s secrets were on continual display for psychologists to decode but Ethan wasn’t a psychologist.  
Ethan attempted to be discreet during his probes in their initial conversations but the Riddle never spoke of himself, his background, his connections, or relationships. All Ethan got in return for his early efforts to get to know the Riddle better was a stony, contemplative stare and a change in the direction of their discourse.  
Eventually, the Riddle decided Ethan was trustworthy, with some fondness calling him Psycho Pomp. Over time they moved on to friendly gossip (sometimes in a literal and sometimes in a metaphorical manner) about who was screwing who. Who was laundering money and who owned the laundry.  
Under the glowing, emerald branches amid the twinkling mist and sparkling lichen and melodious hoots of the owl in the distance accompanying the musica universalis, they discussed the members of TOP. Who bought senators or congressmen, and what was the price and the likely length of servitude. How things were rigged to slant the competitive market economy in favor of TOP. Who did the rigging, The Rig, as Ethan referred to the system implemented by wealthy influential people supporting TOP’s endeavors.  
Although they continued their relationship for years in a reserved, respectful manner Ethan felt the bond between them deepen. When he was with the Riddle he was thankful for his avatar skin. Ethan was sure that without it the warmth welling like a fountain from his heart chakra would be glaringly visible.  
The Riddle, who Ethan referred to as Brónach-tarbh (Sad-bull in Scots-Gaelic), seemed to have an inordinate amount of esoteric knowledge. Perhaps the most significant he reluctantly divulged to Ethan.  
As they sat on boulders a few feet from the luminous, lichen-rimmed entrance to a cave, Ethan listened intently while Brónach-tarbh deliberately chose his syntax and diction in a somewhat mysterious, occult manner to veil his meaning. Ethan was not troubled. He thought he was good at solving riddles.  
The long and short of it was Ethan needed to quiet his mind. Once this was accomplished, he needed to assess the environment determining the nature of the ambient rhythms, the composition created by the pervading phenomena, and the inhabitants, the nature of the ambient narrative. If Ethan did this accurately and successfully synchronized an atonal counterpoint to hum and play in his head his avatar-characteristics would vanish. His form would appear to others in the Netherworld as his life force ordinarily did without the presence of his corporeal consciousness, no skin. Ethan realized Brónach-tarbh had given him a valuable enchantment, a spell. Magic.

Chapter Nine  
Mirror and Identity

Ethan entered the University of Oregon in Eugene the day after the conference call with his agents. He enrolled in psychology, prehistoric America, forestry, and wildlife management courses.  
Leasing a large, ranch-style, buff-brick house with brown trim and shutters, Ethan furnished it with over-the-top, tasteless western furniture. In the spacious den, he installed a mechanical bucking bull and a five-foot-tall, colorful replica of the Yosemite Sam cartoon character. The walls were decorated with mounted bull’s horns, prints of bulls in prehistoric, European cave-art, reproductions of ancient frescos depicting bull-leaping Cretans, photos of bullfights in Spain, and large, glossy posters of sacred Egyptian and Mesopotamian bulls carved from stone. The profusion of flower arrangements in vases were fake boutonnieres. The doorknobs were encased with red clown noses some of which squeaked when grasped.  
#  
As the warm, golden shafts of spring sunlight filtered between the Red cedar and pine down onto the fragile blossoms of pink, spreading phlox, Ethan was cartwheeling, somersaulting, and hand walking through the Cascades. Wearing a jockstrap, hiking boots, and a snug day pack, he made friends with a few bears, skunks, raccoons, and nudists.  
Standing in the yoga Eagle pose at the edge of a woodland, gazing over a meadow of white, avalanche lilies, Ethan meditated on the Jungian phrase he learned in his psychology class: collective unconscious. Ultimately he was satisfied with the conciliation of his experience of the Netherworld with the psychiatrist’s concept. The new terminology did not change things. Monstrous Unnaturals symbolic of corporate misconduct continued to wreak havoc in the Netherworld. Their corresponding corporations in the physical realm degraded the environment with pollutants and poisoned people’s lives with drugs.  
Munching on a lily stem, Ethan contemplated his explorations in the collective unconscious speculating how to make his investigations there improve Carousel efficacy. Increasingly fascinated with some of the more knowledgeable, informative Clichés, and Riddles, Ethan continued to wonder about the identity of their correlates in the conscious dimension.  
Ethan had a hunch that might satisfy his curiosity. He was curious about the obsidian mirrors he learned about in his Prehistoric America class. Many of the Olmec, Mayan, and Aztec gods and priests wore these mirrors suspended from a cord around their necks.  
As spring blossomed, pirouetting, back-flipping, cartwheeling between the Mountain Hemlock and whitebark pines out into the fields of blue lupine of Deschutes National Forest, Ethan searched for and found several fragments of translucent or opaque black obsidian among the old lava flows. Selecting a few thin, flat pieces about the size of his palm, Ethan held each of these up to the sun to determine the presence of bubbles or cloudy inclusions. He took the hoots of a great gray owl as a sign when he’d found the best one. He wrapped it in a bandanna and stashed it in his pack.  
Ethan planned to make an obsidian mirror and take it into the Underworld, as American Indians referred to it. He wanted to see what it reflected if it reflected. Just like shadows, reflective surfaces were nonexistent there.  
At the end of the spring semester, Ethan was examining his flat, circular, highly polished obsidian mirror about three inches in diameter. Holding it at an oblique angle to avoid capturing his reflection, he checked the clarity of the images on the surface thinking it looked like a blank computer screen. Satisfied with the results of his labors, he secured it in a green-jade locket shaped like a scallop shell, a piece he had commissioned from a carver of Wyoming jade.  
#  
Standing in Mag Mell assessing the ambiance of his surroundings, Ethan sensed the tension and drama of clashing pieces of classical music like competing thunderstorms. He couldn’t see or hear any in the glowing forest or above the branches, but Ethan knew Naturals and Unnaturals were running amok unleashing catastrophes and tragedies everywhere in the Underworld just as they were doing in the corporeal realm.  
Glancing down at the clear pond overhung by the glimmering boughs of ancient oaks, Ethan searched for but could not see the big trout usually in residence. His gaze drifted up from the pool to the shimmering, rough, ochre skin and skimpy loincloth of his avatar in the aspect of Charon, the ancient, psychopomp of Greek myth. Toying with the jade locket suspended from a cord around his neck, Ethan contemplated his undertaking.  
Ethan felt compelled to understand the more severely afflicted Riddles. Some of them were terrifyingly magnificent, glittering conglomerations of limbs, or appendages of several creatures. Some shimmering assemblages miraculously achieved a brilliant balance between horror and beauty in their appearance the kind of thing hard to look at equally difficult not to.  
Many Riddles were fascinatingly intelligent offering insights and information about TOP, which many of the Riddles rightly understood to be the progenitors of their afflictions. Ethan felt sure several Riddles were domestic terrorists or eco-terrorists seeking accountability from TOP.  
Ethan was one-hundred-percent certain all TOP were White-eye Riddles. The White-eyes were the most extreme and fascinating, but Puck warned Ethan to keep away from them. Ethan asked Puck about them when the little hobgoblin popped on the scene as he usually did to greet him when he entered Mag Mell.  
“Avoid them at all costs!” Puck said fiercely in a northern-Irish brogue, his little, hovering form shape-shifting furiously glittering and sparkling as though to emphatically elucidate what he proceeded to describe. “All those beautiful, perfect, glimmering human torsos, flaming leonine heads… glittering, feathered wings all the colors of the rainbow… those glistening, muscular legs of bulls, all that charming and witty chatter are meant to entice, enchant and entrap! They are serial killers, mass murders, terrorists, and sadists who will torture and kill you!  
“You’ve made some brief, incidental contact with Netherworld Clichés! A bit of a shock was it?” Puck exclaimed resuming his usual form, tattoos flashing, stained-glass wings whirling, tiny horns throbbing crimson. “Contact with a White-Eye is deadly. If you get close enough to a White-Eye to talk to it, you’ll wind up dead!”  
“I’m Bipolar. I’m a Riddle, aren’t I? I’d like to try to understand them… understand myself,” Ethan shot back, his eyes blazing, ancient eyebrows arched.  
“Yes, but you’re not a White-Eye!” Puck bellowed as loud as he could mouth almost eclipsing his round, bald head and horns.  
“No! No, I’ve got nothing more to say on the matter,” Puck muttered, vanishing in a huff, he added: “Papa Legba, Papa Legba, Papa Legba!”  
“Blast that little fairy,” Papa Legba muttered, his Creole accent plunging as his tall, shimmering, opaque form instantly appeared, brows lowering.  
Papa Legba’s typical shape was quite the opposite of twinkling, naked Puck. Perhaps none of the airy, ephemeral Singularities created a more grounded image than this crafty member of Ethan’s Interdimensional Spy Ring. His body and attire were precisely the same as Uncle Sam, the tall, slender personification of the US government, without the beard. Beneath the dazzling, royal-blue, short, tuxedo jacket the luminescent images of eagles and turkeys romped and flapped on the radiant, yellow suspenders holding up his glossy red-and-white-striped trousers. Papa Legba’s lustrous top hat was creased and crinkled in a pattern resembling a cramped beaver’s face in the front, a beavertail in the back undulated in a swimmingly, languid manner.  
Papa Legba’s long face sagged under luminous, dried, cracked and caked clown-white on forehead, jaws, lips and jutting chin. Vertical streaks of spectral, black mascara creased his cheeks like war paint or the tracks of tears. Small, incandescent, human figures bristling with glowing needles dangled by hangman’s nooses from his pierced earlobes beneath the frizzy white hair. The irises of his eyes were the green of a wine bottle weathered in the elements for ages. His pupils resembled holes created by a bullet passing through glass. A tired, tragic, melancholy clown-face masking more mischief than a barrel of fox pups.  
“The heck you want to mess with the White-Eyes?” Respectfully, his deep, bass voice embodying the gravitas of a Negro spiritual singer, eyes hooded suspiciously.  
Ethan explained his interest in the White-Eyes, his voice rising and falling, his arms and hands swinging and gesturing. Papa Legba listened attentively, the configuration in the cracks radiating out from the black pupils in the frosty, olive-green irises vacillating between the brink of laughter and the verge of tears. Having a hard time keeping eye contact during his explanation, Ethan watched the tail of the hat drifting around in a steady, contemplative fashion like a pair of spectacles dangling in a psychiatrist’s hand.  
Pausing at the end of his explanation, Ethan was shocked to discover they were no longer in Mag Mell. Judging by the ambiance, they were in Shipap, which meant Papa Legba was a Master Traveler. He could go wherever he pleased in the twinkling of an eye and transport a guest.  
“Tradition would demand you steal something precious from an ancient blacksmith to assist in addressing the issue,” Papa Legba concluded emphatically from the depths of his throat one eyebrow arched conspiratorially. “They usually have something magical temptingly, casually lying around, or hidden away someplace that’s extremely secret, has a forbiddingly menacing atmosphere.”  
“Uh-huh,” Ethan’s eyes wide, inquisitive and fascinated gaze demanding more from Papa Legba.  
“Ever heard of the dimension, Dankuš Daganzipaš?” Papa Legba asked in a vaguely Middle Eastern accent, a tone threatening to doom his Adam’s apple.  
“Nope,” eyes narrowing, enthralled, Ethan craned his ancient head upward and forward. The invisible tractor-beam of his eyes honing in on Papa Legba.  
“The Blacksmith of Kur, Hasammeli?” The Adam’s apple disappearing as though only the deepest depths of his throat could give justice to the utterance of the name. “The first to smelt iron?”  
“Nope,” eyes squinting, Ethan withdrew slightly, and Papa Legba lowered his head maintaining steady eye contact unaware of the tractor beam pulling him in.  
“Good!” The Adam’s apple popped back up and bobbed in what could have been a jovial manner.  
“Ignorance is arguably the best quality in a thief,” Papa Legba almost smiled, and Ethan grinned uncertainly, not sure just what the almost-smile signaled. “Just look at what Bilbo Baggins accomplished!  
“There’s something I’ve always wanted from the forge of Hasammeli,” enticing tone, Papa Legba’s Adam’s apple descending as he spoke, the needles in the figures dangling from his ears sparkling. “But there are reasons I will not venture into Dankuš Daganzipaš. So, if I transport you there at the right time, and back here in a timely fashion, you must obtain that desirable something and split it with me. If you’re successful, I’ll tell you how to use it in the matter of the White-Eyes. Agreed?”  
“Agreed,” ears standing at attention, mouth slightly open, Ethan nodded. “What is it and how do I get it?”  
“The molten gold dropping from Hasammeli’s crucible as he transfers it with tongs from the forge to an ingot,” a daring glare, challenging timbre, Papa Legba replied sounding like a deep bell tolling death and doom. “Hasammeli will be uttering a magical incantation while he’s doing that and will stop for nothing. The gold will be in a liminal state from the time it’s taken from the forge up until the moment he finishes the magic spell. Your purposes and mine require something of that nature.”  
Ethan blinked, shivering. Ecstatic at the challenge.  
“Just catch the droppings as they fall,” Papa Legba said, hastily pulling a bag from a tuxedo pocket, “in this bag made of smoke. It will not burn or transfer heat. Wear it like a fielder’s mitt and don’t let it touch the ground. It’ll be loud there in the forge. No time to plug your ears because the time is NOW!”  
BAM!  
Face scrunching, Ethan grimaced mightily. He quickly removed his loincloth full of shit while trying to suppress his explosive guffaw. He couldn't believe his ears.  
‘Sustained explosion’ would have been more appropriate than the term ‘loud’. Ethan instantly realized the racket was orchestrated not just to deter but to kill anyone or anything venturing into the forge to steal magical stuff.  
A cacophonic symphony. Bellows sounding like melting tubas blowing air into flames. Metal bass, kettle, and snare drums beating in rhythm with the blows of the hammers on anvils like faulty-compressor jack-hammers. Cymbals and tambourines hissing like steam. Gongs banging and clashing. Slithering crazily through it all the strings of an amplified, electric baglama, a tortured Middle Eastern Jimi Hendrix. Ethan choked back another explosive laugh realizing his first unbelievable impression was correct: embedded in the thunderous sound were the distinct, delicate, tiptoeing violin strings of Camille Saint-Saëns “Dance Macbre”.  
“Yee! Haw!” Ethan muttered under his breath eyes wide in disbelief before cringing, grabbing his head rolling into a fetal position as the colossal swarm of vibrations assaulted his head like a flock of carrion birds picking apart his skull digging into his brain. A brief squinting assessment revealed he was under a lustrous table, or workbench fit for a giant. All around him a maddening array of blazing, phosphorescent sparks trailing rainbows like comets were zooming, whizzing, bouncing, darting, and ricocheting off everything and each other.  
Frantically, on his tiptoes to the rhythm of the violins dodging two, huge, calloused, sooty feet shimmering like twilight, Ethan burst into the spray of sparks. Twisting, spinning, and dancing amid the glittering barrage of smarting, searing, stinging missiles, he followed the feet.  
Ethan stifled a scream as he was bowled over by a rolling, tumbling, blazing cinder knocking him flat on his back. Looking up at the giant, luminous blacksmith wreathed in ghostly smoke, fluorescent sparks, and blinding bolts of lightning similar to the smoldering peak of a volcano on the brink of erupting, he wondered what Jack the Giant-killer would do. Ethan flipped onto his stomach, spurting after the colossal form. Choking back shrieks while desperately shimmying, flittering across the floor, feeling like his skin was sluffing off like a molting snake.  
The baglama abruptly fell quiet. The head-splitting, mind-numbing symphony of the forge crashed to an end but the violins, French horns, cymbals, and drums of the “Dance Macbre” swelled toward its jerky conclusion in his head. Gasping, Ethan struggled to catch his breath chest heaving sweat dripping.  
Hasammeli’s thunderous incantation erupted challenging tripping along at the same accelerating tempo as “Dance Macbre”. The sound of the voice was deep and unsettling, slipping into the subsonic realm. The ground trembling glowing more brightly under Ethan. Profusely sweating, scrambling madly, dodging sparks feeling as though his mind and body were disintegrating, Ethan encountered a splatter of molten gold heavier than his weight bobbing brilliantly before his eyes.  
He sprang up catching the smoldering, gleaming, smaller droplets in the bag cradled in both hands. Jerking, lurching, twirling, lunging, plunging, diving and leaping across the glowing floor on his toes like a ballet dancer every pellet of scintillating gold dropping into his bag to the thump of a bass drum and clash of cymbals in the Saint-Saëns composition. Ethan following beneath the sparkling crucible carried in the tongs held in front of Hasammeli. The huge blacksmith’s concentration didn’t falter from his incantation, nor did his hand waver in balancing the shimmering crucible. Hasammeli kicked out at Ethan directly in his path.  
Hopping and dancing, Ethan staggered to maintain his balance keeping his grip on the growing weight in the bag. Just as a spiraling spray of golden droplets like a shower of fiery meteorites started plummeting down and a forked array of sizzling lightning was rocketing toward him Ethan tripped and fell on his stomach with arms extended.  
BAM!  
Ethan saw double—two bags of gold four hands. His vision shifting from one bag and two hands back to two bags and four hands in rhythm with the sound of his breath wheezing loudly in and out of his throat. Lying on his stomach wisps of smoke rising from his hands, aching from head to toe, head splitting. Hands trembling, he held the bag full of glittering gold in his outstretched arms just above the glowing ground. He sensed he was back in Shipap.  
“Hold still!” Papa Legba sternly commanded, blinking in the smoke stifling a cough.  
Breathless and dizzy from the ordeal in the forge, leaping between dimensions, Ethan squinted, eyes focusing. Fuzzily, he saw the long, tall, glimmering form of Papa Legba on his knees and elbows, tweezers in hand plucking gold pellets from Ethan’s bag into one of his own.  
“Why do I get the feeling you were just beginning to enjoy yourself?” Papa Legba muttering admiringly as he rose from his knees unfolding upward to his full, blazing height and glory as Ethan’s vision cleared. “There’s a hyper-grin on your sooty, gold-freckled face.  
“There’s your half,” the deep, bass voice rumbling with gusto as though about to burst soulfully into a Negro spiritual tune as he gestured at Ethan’s share in the bag of smoke.  
“Just use any witty, wily subterfuge you find suitable to convince the White-Eye of your choice one of those nuggets is a happy pill, or, steroids, or whatever,” Papa rumbled affectionately, thoughtfully watching Ethan. “Or, you can just pitch one of them at it. Its surface will absorb it. It’s a kind of stimulant, you know, like giving a hyperactive, attention-deficit kid Ritalin. But don’t let your guard down while you have your psychological explorations!  
“You’re mighty clever, Psycho Pomp, but you’re not yet a match for a creature that simply has no empathy!” troubled, Papa Legba’s deep, bell-like voice tolled lower and lower as he uttered the final words.  
“Where’d you get this bag?” Ethan asked eying the weightless, crepuscular cloth.  
“Cactus Granny made it for me. She can spin thread from anything and weave it into whatever shape you want if the price is right,” Papa Legba vanishing amidst a silent explosion of glittering confetti.  
While examining the shifting surface of the bag and its glimmering contents, Ethan decided to forego any immediate explorations into the psyche of a White-Eye. Eying the lustrous pills, he plucked one out, popping it down his throat, briefly contemplating the problem of habit-forming legal drugs and his refusal to take his meds.  
Pharmaceuticals, particularly opioids, were killing people and destroying families in droves through addiction and overdoses. The wastes of chemical and drug companies were beginning to create potentially dangerous drug cocktails in the environment. The actual consequences of Big Pharma wastes, including the residues of cosmetics and personal products, on the environment, were as yet unknown. However, Ethan believed Carousel had to try to address this growing threat of tragedy.  
Ethan suddenly remembered Brónach-tarbh, who had his concerns about Pharma-Unnaturals ravaging the Netherworld. He had warned Ethan about this potential for tragedy some time ago. Ethan was intrigued about how this lonely creature deep in a cedar forest on a remote mountainside in distant Kur got his data, which seemed boundless.  
Ethan was beginning to feel euphoric, ethereal not in the least stressed out or in pain from his ordeal in the forge. He decided to visit his go-to buddy for companionship and maybe a little inside information on Big-Pharma.  
Ethan climbed down into the dark, forbidding cavern extending from Shipap to Mictlan. He knew there was a way to enter each of the dimensions of the Netherworld directly from the conscious realm or travel from one Otherworld domain straight to another, bypassing the intervening domains, as Master Travelers did. Ethan didn’t know how, so he had to go through Mictlan and Naraka to get to Kur, having plenty of time to think.  
The Andalusian classical music seemed mellower than usual murmuring flutes, tinkling lutes, whispering rattles, and finger cymbals when he arrived in the cedar forest of Kur. He sensed battles, thunderstorms raging in the distance.  
More than once Ethan had expressed his interest in the cave in the side of the mountain Brónach-tarbh seemed to be guarding, but the Riddle was evasive when Ethan enquired if it might be an entrance into another dimension. Ethan also wondered about the gleaming, six-foot sword driven into the sand at the cave entrance but didn’t comment on it.  
Ethan’s inquiries about the nature of the sentient trees in the vast cedar forest surrounding the mountain also had been met with equivocation from the big Riddle. Ethan was sure the trees formed a data-gathering network among their intertwining roots ranging far and wide to the edges of the urban areas of Kur, and along the roads and rivers extending from them.  
In a relaxed yet seriously inquisitive mood, Ethan arrived at the forest in the vast, deep, gloomy gorge where the cryptic Riddle dwelled. Sparkling like fresh, chartreuse, lime, and emerald lava, Brónach-tarbh sat on a glowing boulder near the cave. The darkly glimmering forest loomed soft with iridescent mist and twinkling patches of lichen.  
As Ethan drew closer, he became aware of a pair of golden, round eyes in the shimmering haze above the horned, shaggy head of Sad-Bull. The image gradually resolved into an owl with scintillating plumage identical in color to the cedar fronds and branches its gleaming claws curled around. Vaguely reminiscent of the scene in Alice in Wonderland with the Cheshire Cat Ethan suddenly realized.  
From the depths of the cavern, Ethan heard the faint strains of a decidedly, non-Andalusian piano nocturne. A soloist sounding far away in a great, hollow space, somber, haunting. There was something familiar, Scottish timbre maybe but Ethan was certain he had never heard it. He tried to filter out the ambiance of Kur and concentrate on Brónach, the nocturne, and the silent, staring owl.  
Brónach’s greeting was warm, welcoming. They quickly settled comfortably into the topic of drugs and human bodies as analogous to environmental pollution and the earth. Ethan did not comment on the changes in Brónach’s appearance, the bullish head and shoulders were no longer human the arms and legs covered in verdant and tawny tangles of plasma filaments. He wondered if the Riddle’s identity issues were tipping the balance away from human to brute to White-eye.  
Halfway through what would turn out to be a lengthy discussion, the Riddle paused to rub his gleaming, yellow eyes with his glimmering lion paw. Opening the jade case, Ethan got a brief glimpse at the reflection of Brónach-tarbh in the obsidian mirror instantly closing the case.  
The image that emerged in living color on the polished surface was the appearance of the Riddle’s human correlate in the physical world. The visual impression of a handsome man with thick, dark hair, a high broad forehead, straight eyebrows and nose, chiseled, heart-shaped mouth with full lips above a strong chin with a cleft burned into Ethan’s memory.

Chapter Ten  
Nightmare and Seduction

The recurring nightmare disturbing Ethan the most never had the same visual images. There was never any sky, no elements of nature. The theme or context was always the same: a shifting maze. Sometimes he was outdoors in a construction zone where concrete barriers or cement supports magically popped up obstructing Ethan’s passage. Other times Ethan was inside a giant machine with moving parts becoming more numerous and pounding down from above harder and faster. The only human element in the ever-changing maze was an anonymous man Ethan occasionally glimpsed in the distance seemingly beckoning him onward and gesturing toward an apparent objective or escape. The nightmare roused him from bed energized, fleeing from futility.  
Ethan fled from his nightmare cheerily jumping from rodeo to rodeo in Idaho and Montana. Brimming with enthusiasm and grinning broadly, he had a great time. He gleefully performed in the arena, updated his algorithms as new data poured in, and enjoyed brief romances.  
Happily humming or playing a Mozart composition on his ocarina, he continued to scout for Carousel agents with the assistance of his Oregon and Washington agents and The Lads. He hired two people in Idaho and two in western Montana before the summer was over. He was satisfied the network was developing, and the mission was well on its way to humorously defame, disgrace and demoralize corporations, the members of TOP, and the Rig responsible degrading the environment.  
In the following years, he enrolled at the University of Wyoming taking classes in criminal forensics, chemistry, physics, and astronomy. At the University of Arizona, he attended courses in criminal law, introductory and advanced computer forensics, geology, and hydrology. At the University of New Mexico, he studied Native American pharmacology, Southwestern Folklore, and criminal forensics.  
Ethan used falsified birth certificates to acquire his state driver’s licenses and student IDs as he had since leaving California making every attempt to keep the bullfighter career separate from his student persona. Realizing his mistake in Oregon, through the connections of The Lads and his agents he obliterated all evidence of his residence and student activity.  
Under the guise of a student, Ethan rolled in the hay with several partners, hired agents, developed his algorithms, and investigated the machinations of The Rig enabling TOP. As a professional bullfighter, he clowned his way through Colorado, Nevada, and California engaging more agents and perfecting his Carousel network. Ethan never thought anyone suspected he was fighting an earnest and secret war with the Establishment, a war that intensified after the 2008 financial meltdown and beginning of the Great Recession.  
The laughter of the rodeo crowds in response to his daring and comic performances in the arena provided brief moments of intense, immediate gratification. He felt those interludes necessary in recharging his efforts for environmental justice. For Ethan, that was the real potential for deep, enduring comedy, unending laughter: the clandestine actions he instigated exposing The Rig’s policies resulting in the degradation of Nature. Ethan reveled in laying bare the motives of TOP to make a buck now at the expense of future generations’ health and the health of the earth.  
When Ethan traveled in the Netherworld he was so caught up in Carousel matters he seldom had personal time to spend with Brónach. When his compulsion to see Brónach became overwhelming he made time, but Ethan found the melancholy Riddle seemingly on a course of withdrawal as though trying to hide the progression of his beastliness. Ethan often thought that if he had more time he could prevent the degradation of man into an animal but Brónach was never helpful, open to discussions about himself.  
Ethan took a break from his mission in the spring of 2009 to return home to attend personal matters. Pearl had expired from a stroke while hiking. After the small, brief memorial attended by the remnants of his family, Elsa and Nell, and a few of her other buddies, and Uncle Luke, Ethan had Pearl’s body cremated as stipulated in her will.  
Sobbing and alone, he placed the urn with her ashes on the mantle of the fireplace in the living room next to the one holding Granddaddy Dewar’s ashes. Staring with unseeing eyes at the Bierstadt panoramas, flipping through the cookbooks and measuring utensils Pearl taught him how to use, tapping the keys of Granddaddy’s old keyboard. Wracked with grief, face blank, he closed all the curtains and sank into his bed rolling the bedding around himself. For two days and nights, Ethan fought his battle between a crossfire: the depression on one side and on the other his hatred for his medication. On the third morning, the recurring nightmare spurred him from the sheets.  
Frowning and humming, Ethan searched for his old ocarinas and played the scales as he remembered learning them. Strolling into the sunny kitchen, he ate a hearty breakfast of yogurt, nuts, and fruit. Rising from the table, he played the first simple tunes he learned as a child.  
Playing his arrangement of a concerto by Mozart (whose nature he considered close to his own), Ethan sat in the hot tub. On his head, the bottom of a pair of his childhood pajamas he discovered while storing away Nell’s things. Naked from the head down, he took stock.  
Under the blue storybook sky and branches of Sequoias, Ethan decided Carousel was humming along just fine. He concluded his rodeo career was in no danger as long as he remained healthy.  
Ethan reckoned his intimate life was becoming a little boring—he wasn’t getting as many laughs in bed as he once did. He wondered if he had reached his peak in his personal life, and everything was downhill from here.  
“Let’s go see!” Wee Clown peeking above water level whispered conspiratorially.  
Ethan engaged Elsa and Nell as caretakers for the estate. He let his hair and beard, untrimmed since Pearl’s death, continue to grow and headed out to a rodeo in Laramie.  
“Get a haircut!” Elsa bellowed as Ethan was backing his pickup from the driveway.  
As usual on road trips, Ethan chose campsites in forested areas far off the road, stripping, enjoying an ovo-lacto dinner, relaxing afterward playing soothing classical tunes on his ocarina. After a couple of hours, he assumed a meditative posture, breathing the sweet fragrances of Nature entering the starless underworld.  
During the forays, Ethan met briefly with a few glimmering members of the Spy Ring to get updates on the schemes of The Rig and TOP. At the last of these meetings on his trip, shimmering Papa Legba was present, inquiring with his deep voice about Ethan’s explorations into the White-Eye psyche. Somberly, Ethan replied that although abuse as a child and trauma to the head were contributing factors to the creation of a White-Eye, he believed the final answer lay with the abnormal function of the endocrine system.  
Ethan revealed that after several, long consultations with Cactus Granny, he decided that about the time these individuals entered puberty when physical and sexual development kicked in, the hormones contributing to the mental and emotional development virtually shut down. Ethan concluded by saying the head trauma some of the individuals suffered may have affected the pineal gland, which administers all hormones.  
“So that’s why White-eyes are emotionally shallow and remain at about a fifth- or sixth-grade mentality,” Papa Legba mused eyes heavy-lidded, rubbing his chin. “Wonder how long it will take folks in the corporeal world to come to that conclusion and do something about it?”  
“Hopefully, before the forty-fifth president of the United States gets elected,” Ethan responded dolefully, eyes downcast, head shaking sadly.  
#  
Saturday night when Ethan arrived in Laramie, there was little traffic because almost everybody was in the arena. Grabbing his duffle bag, he glanced around at the parking lot packed with trucks gleaming under the street lights. He paused to deeply inhale the smell of machines, people, hay, and livestock before locking his vehicle and hurrying to the locker room. The moment Ethan opened the door and strolled in, men greeted him with cheerful waves, catcalls, and grins.  
“You’re gonna be late!” more than one person yelled.  
He was running late, but he was not scheduled to perform at the intermission just ending by the sound of the music. He had time to dress and put on makeup for the bull riding.  
Ethan studied his face in the mirror, applying makeup. He didn’t take much time with the clown white. Rubbing the bristling, glistening beard, he thought it looked good, made him appear virile, sexy, mature. Killing a little time, dawdling with mascara, noticing he reeked of sweat, sagebrush, pinyon, and juniper, Ethan realized he hadn’t showered or slept since he left California.  
While dressing, Ethan briefly examined the tattered white tank top splattered with what looked like bullshit outlined with red glitter. He stepped into his composite of two pair of flashy, tacky boxer shorts secured with a rope at the top, and baggy jeans cut-offs held in place with neon-yellow suspenders. He completed his costume with a big, red-satin bandanna around his neck, a ragged cowboy hat, and a pink, high-top tennis shoe on his right foot.  
The red cowboy boot on his left foot concealed a sheath attached to the interior holding a knife with a sharp, six-inch blade. He felt he needed a safety precaution against the time a bull rider couldn’t free his hand from the handle in the bull rope. Ethan hated to think of people (or critters) in desperate situations.  
Moments later, Ethan played down a stumbling, bumbling, aerial walkover and pitch-tuck into the arena amidst loud applause, hoots, whistles, and shouts of Do-Do, his bullfighter name. Hungrily inhaling the scent of human- and animal sweat, he greeted the second bullfighter, Jim Stern, in a bashful apologetic, clowning manner. He nodded to the two, mounted pickup men, and noted the position and condition of the arena barrel.  
“Hey, Marlboro-man,” eyes bright Ethan cheekily sidling up to greet the gateman, Chester Fauré.  
Chester was a forty-something Cajun, a former steer wrestler from Louisiana. He was dressed in his usual attire of crisply starched, long-sleeved white shirt, pressed blue jeans, and cowboy boots. Standing a couple of inches shorter than Ethan, Chester was a brawny, barrel-chested man. His sideburns were dark the cleft in his chin deep the tips of his ears flaring beneath the white cowboy hat pressed down on them. Ethan remembered getting nothing more than looks of disapproval, possibly slight disgust from the guy.  
“Man,” Chester hissed with his Cajun accent between tight lips over his shoulder then turned his attention back to the chute, “you smell gonna drive des bulls crazy.”  
“That’s my plan,” Ethan replied grinning, ignoring the loud, distinctive whistle from the audience of a fan with whom he had shared intimacy.  
Chester released a short laugh. He backed away until the rope attached to the gate was taut.  
Rodeo bulls were usually extreme crossbreeds, but Ethan liked to type them according to their most visible breed characteristics—Brahma, Toro de Lidia, Corriente, British white, Longhorn, Hereford. The first bull out of the chute was a big, young Toro de Lidia-Corriente mix with spreading horns. Ethan could see it was greatly displeased by the sting of the cattle prod (a practice defunct in most rodeos) and the final, tightening tug on the flank strap by the chute attendants when Chester opened the gate.  
Hopping and skipping, Ethan watched closely assessing the bull’s movements. It bucked once sharply and high then settled into a fast, tight counterclockwise twirl ending abruptly spinning away to its right. The bull rider soared in an arc down into the dirt before the regulation eight seconds ended. Ethan dodged around watching the progress of the bull rider through the air from the corner of his eye but remained focused on the animal’s movement to gauge its rhythm, momentum, and temper level.  
Ethan and Jim did the usual perfunctory bounces, flailing their arms to distract the bull away from the bull rider stumbling to his feet. As usual, Jim stayed between the man and the bull ensuring the cowboy’s safety while Ethan enticed the bull toward the exit. This tactic was going according to plan until the last moment. As the animal trotted toward the opening, its anger escalating swinging his head and horns unexpectedly at the last second at Ethan. Theatrically scrambling up the barrier, Ethan clung to the top trembling in confusion and fright for the entertainment of the audience. Women squealed men howled and stomped shaking the metal stands as the bull exited the arena.  
Continuing his pantomime of fear and disorientation with lolling head, shuddering body and wobbling knees Ethan lurched back over to Chester. He noticed Chester head down as though examining the gate rope, but his narrowed, brown eyes were watching Ethan quizzically from beneath the brim of the white hat. Ethan raised his eyebrows, shaking his head pretending not to recognize the warbling cat-call from a former partner in the audience.  
The next bull was in the chute. Ethan examined the large, speckled Brahma-British White with banana horns judging its temperament. Attempting to gauge the Cajun’s mood, Ethan scrutinized Chester’s movements as the man turned his attention entirely on the rope, gate, bull, and rider.  
“Dis fellow,” said Chester through his clenched teeth, nodding at the bull, “been smellin’ you since you go’ ‘ere. I thin’ he like wha’ he smells.”  
“Maybe he and I will have a better relationship than the last one. He just got me worked up, foreplay,” Ethan smiled, adjusting his suspenders, unsure how to interpret Chester’s attitude.  
Ethan danced backward swinging his fists down on the level with his knees showing the crowd he was over his fear, spoiling for a fight. Backing and pulling the rope, Chester glanced over at him. Ethan shot him a crazily lascivious smile, eyes crossed.  
The big bull exploded from the chute, reared, came down, and immediately jerked its hindquarters twice high in the air with one smooth double-buck sending the cowboy tumbling over its head. The crowd howled, whistled, and stomped the metal bleachers. Ethan danced and cavorted toward the arena exit drawing the bull away from the rider. Jim followed behind the beast making sure it didn’t turn on the cowboy struggling to rise.  
Waving his hat in the air with one hand, Ethan wiggled and bounced just to the right of the exit as the bull charged. It changed course at the last second smashing into the guard fence a moment after Ethan reached up and behind him, grabbing the top rail pulling himself up to flip over to the other side. The rail grazed the top of Ethan’s head knocking off his hat. The crowd stood and roared, the Brahma-British White bounced back from the impact, snorting, trotting on to the corrals.  
“Do-Do! Do-Do!” The audience chanted, whistled, stomped.  
Spine tingling from the crowd response, Ethan shakily crept over the fence. He flopped onto the ground groveling around trying to locate his hat. The crowd laughed, applauding, cheering. Sweating, wiping his face with his bandanna, Ethan stumbled over to Chester.  
“Do-Do,” Chester muttered flatly from under his hat brim, needlessly fiddling with the rope, “you bette’ turn down de smell, no’ crank it up.”  
“I just want me a lover bull,” Ethan said bouncing up and down raising his arms like he was weight-lifting.  
Ethan watched the muscles in Chester’s neck and hands, the tension in the rope the third bull spring out of the chute. It was a big, brindle, Longhorn with sweeping horns. It bounded directly at Ethan from the chute in a rampaging, irregular snaking pattern rolling its back discharging the rider in seconds. The Honker dropped into a stiff-legged standing pose for a second, abandoning both rhythm and momentum, a warning sign of unpredictability. The Longhorn swung its head slinging mucus and snot, and charged Ethan.  
Ethan went for the ridiculous whipping off his red bandanna, waving it while circling the barrel racing for the exit. He pulled up abruptly to the left of the opening springing into a high backflip toward the right side where the last bull battered its head. At speed, as the bull entered the exit, its left horn snagged the post just as Ethan sailed over its head. The tip of the horn snapped off, and, staggered by the abrupt loss of momentum, the Longhorn’s body swung around to the right. Its hindquarters slammed into the opposite gatepost, tail flipping up to slap him in the face as Ethan landed on his feet. A little bullshit squirted on Ethan’s chest just before the bull righted itself and trotted out of the arena. The crowd stood, roaring, whistling, clapping, stomping.  
“Do-Do! Do-Do!”  
Ethan theatrically wiped his forehead pretending to be oblivious to the stinking crap on his chest. Resolutely, he tied the bandanna around his neck, marching over to Chester.  
“Ethan,” Chester said, the Cajun patois barely escaping the tight lips, the hard jaw, “you bette’ get ou’ ‘ere fast we done, ‘cause no’ only are de riders gonna’ be piss at you for upstagin’ dem, the stock contractor too if you abuse de bulls.”  
“Think maybe I oughta get a ride with someone, leave my truck here to throw them off track?” Ethan asked, realizing this was the first time Chester addressed him using his real name, not his bullfighter name. Chester nodded once curtly, grimly setting his teeth, jaw muscles bulging, sideburns bristling.  
Ethan was exhausted by the time the performance was over. He had dealt with three Bad Wrecks and one, hung-up Rag Doll, something he very much dreaded the three seconds of the hang-up slowing to dream-time seeming interminable to Ethan. He was hokey-pokyed and jitterbugged out.  
Bone weary, alone back at the locker room Ethan listlessly stripped, stuffed the costume in his duffle bag, and removed most of his makeup with a bandanna. He was startled by the sound of the locker room door banging against the wall as he was stepping into the shower surprised to see Chester.  
“Come on,” Chester whispered motioning with his hand. “Dey coming,’ an’ dey got a rop’. Nop’, nop’, no time,” he added as Ethan pointed to the shower.  
Pulling on his jeans, grabbing his bag, boots, and shirt, Ethan hurriedly followed Chester to the back door. A chuckle escaping from his throat, Ethan hopped into the truck bed, lying flat on his back thinking: sweet seduction.  
The bottom of the truck bed felt cold on his bare back and feet, momentarily jarring away some of the weariness. The rhythmic thump of the tires on the pavement was lulling him into sleep just as Chester pulled into the garishly bright parking lot of the motel.  
“Come on,” Chester said slamming the truck door, locking it. Ethan held out his arm in a feeble manner.  
“Nop’,” Chester snorted shaking his head. “Ain fallin’ for dat in public.”  
Ethan pulled himself up from the bed, dropping onto the parking lot, gathering his things to his chest. He glanced around but saw no other person out and about. He followed Chester into the room, closing the door.  
Inside Chester was sitting in the chair beside the door pulling off his boots and socks. He tipped his hat onto the table as Ethan dropped his things on the floor.

Chapter Eleven  
Romance and Depression

“Tell me, Ethan,” Chester murmured tenderly into his ear the following morning, “why you ‘ere.”  
Feeling happy, relaxed, and rested, Ethan was laying on his left side half asleep. He rubbed his eyes lightly, turning his head on the pillow the fresh sheets feeling crisp, smelling clean, mingling with Chester’s masculine scent. Ethan couldn’t turn far, Chester’s chin resting on his shoulder. Chester immediately planting his tongue in Ethan’s ear. Fragrant, velvety, red rose petals drifted down onto the pillow, his hair, face, and beard. Ethan heard the brief, succinct sound of a rose blossom twisted from its stem, feeling the mattress move as Chester lifted his arm high to release the second handful of petals.  
“I’m here because you brought me here,” Ethan replied hoarsely shivering in response to the lingering withdrawal of the tongue.  
“You taste good, like fennel and mint. I mea’ the big piture,” Chester rumbled warmly in his deep, mellow voice. “No dissemblin’, pretendin’ you don know I mean.”  
“Oh,” Ethan mumbled, smiling happily, dropping his head back to the pillow, clearing his throat, “big picture.  
“Chester,” Ethan sighing, blinking, “I'm not being sarcastic when I say you’re a much more perceptive, smarter, charming man than I ever gave you credit for in the years we’ve known each other. You compel a man to expose all he has left in him when he’s bone-tired, and you probe for his secrets when he’s in a state susceptible to reveal them.”  
“Agree,” Chester replied affably, raising his eyebrows, pulling Ethan over onto his back, splashing another handful of petals on him, rolling on top of him slowly coming face-to-face.  
“I’m the compellin’, probin’ type, but my type hear and keep lo’ of secre’, Ethan, sweethear’, love,” Chester whispered affectionately, kissing him lightly on the lips, gazing into his eyes. “You better dan most wha’ you do, Ethan, but you ain rodeo. It eviden’ you like rodeoin’ and people adorin’ laughter for de hero of the bull rider. You out der in da world doing sometin’ you love more dan rodeo whil you rodeoin’. I wan’ know is you love doin’. ‘Cause if you love better dan rodeo must be sometin’ special, sometin’ make bigger, longer-lastin’ laugh.  
“I love dat sweet, innocen’ face, it don’t fool me. Spill the beans. Chocolate?” Chester with a light kiss offering a box he pulled from the bedside table.  
“This your idea of romance, Chester?” Ethan mumbled, grinning, staring into Chester’s eyes, placing a fingertip on the cleft chin.  
Ethan looked into Chester’s intense, dark gaze, smiled, popped a chocolate and spilled the beans. An hour later Chester’s response surprised Ethan.  
“You’re an insurrectionis’. I wonder anyone eve’ have da balls to take on The Rig and The One Percen’ single-hand,” Chester said smiling, serious, voice soft admiring.  
“My fif’-grade teach spell ou’ on da blackboard one day longes’ word in da English language… antiestablishmentarianism. I was impress by da word, and I’ve been intrigue by da idea since. Can I see the algorithms?”  
“You did a good job of pronouncing algorithms and antiestablishmentarianism, Chester,” Ethan grinned eyebrows arching inquisitively. “Where’d the Cajun accent go?”  
“It come, it go, it beguilin’ ain it?” Chester replied, raising his eyebrows, shaking his head, shrugging.  
After a long shower together, and a big breakfast of orange juice, pancakes, eggs, and biscuits (with gravy, bacon, and sausage liberally sprinkled with hot sauce for Chester) on the sunny deck of the motel restaurant they retrieved Ethan’s pick up and returned to the room. Settling at the table with Ethan’s laptop, they spent most of the day shoulder-to-shoulder, Ethan explaining Carousel’s mission in detail, scrolling through algorithms. He sprinkled his explanation with comedy, loving the sound of Chester’s throaty, mellow laughter.  
“So you’ve got an algorithm… a continuous algorithm… for each of the ten western states, excluding Utah, that can determine the sources of environmental injustices,” Chester said holding Ethan’s gaze, a hand rubbing his cleft chin. “They’re all connected by a master algorithm for cross-checking the progress. They all run continuously, each indicating potential junctures for implementing bad publicity and punitive actions against The One Percent or The Rig. Amazing!  
“Ethan, love!” Chester said enthusiastically, roughly hugging him, “you do love living dangerously in and out of the rodeo arena! TOP be like the bulls you haze and tease and break de horn make the audience shout and laugh! That’s what I be thinking from now on when I watch you in da arena.”  
They spent as much time together as their schedules permitted for the remainder of the rodeo season. When the finals in Las Vegas were over Ethan invited Chester to share his home not wanting to break the loving bond. Chester heartily, jovially accepted.  
The decks provided the stage for many raw, nude wrestling duals throughout the winter and spring, sometimes even in the chill of night and rainy mornings. To Ethan’s surprise, Chester admitted he perpetually fell in love rolling in the weeds with hunting and fishing buddies along the bayous of Louisiana, Mississippi, and Alabama since puberty. He thought indoor intimacy blasé and tedious unless it was in an abandoned building or a barn.  
“Bed and bed’oom for sleepin’ not fo’ folickin’!” Chester boomed tipping his hat back scratching his sideburns. “Good folickin’ need de feel a’ dirt, grit, grass, dew. Music a’ de birds and crickets. Smell a’ de trees and flowers and critters! Taste of sunshine and rain!”  
Ethan enjoyed helping Chester build the small barn and corral on the property to accommodate his two, bay Quarter horses, Bruno and Thibaut (pronounced T-boe). Chester eased into the Carousel mission and was introduced to Luke MacDonald and the three remaining Lads at the Castle. They enjoyed a mellow, romantic Christmas and the New Year found them in the museums and public gardens of the Bay Area. Their periods at home were spent cooking, wrestling, or seated shoulder-to-shoulder working on the Carousel mission. Daily they rode Bruno and Thibaut along the gravel road extending past the front of the house up into the hills.  
In the spring and summer, the rodeo folks welcomed them with respectful reserve. They managed to arrange their schedules permitting them to travel together, work the same rodeos for the most part, and plot with the Carousel agents.  
Chester was aware there were convoluted channels through which Ethan implemented Carousel’s covert activities. He realized Carousel was responsible for exposés appearing in the media but he didn’t inquire about the ‘Black-Ops’ Ethan once mentioned with a wink.  
By the time of the finals in Las Vegas in 2010, the intensity of their love was mellowing into affectionate friendship. Chemistry for the erotic bubbling away, they still wrestled and often slept together, sat shoulder-to-shoulder, devoted, and committed. Ethan wanted to but couldn’t confess he was unable to get an image of the handsome man reflected in an obsidian mirror out of his mind, his relationship with Sad-bull.  
Happily, Ethan noticed the recurring nightmare occurred less frequently. He thought the helpful stranger in the awful dream might be Chester. He convinced Chester to stay indefinitely and help him with the Carousel mission offering an exceptional salary and benefits package. Chester cheerfully accepted.  
Thanksgiving weekend Ethan and Chester were fielding calls from the agents and warily watching the ten, twenty-seven-inch LCD computer screens mounted on the walls of the study. Scrolling up and down, Ethan was frustrated the big screens were not sufficient to display any of the ten, separate state-algorithms in full. On their desktop computers, they documented things they couldn’t keep track of in their heads, and there were quite a few files for the different categories of notes.  
The refrigerator and cabinets were nearly empty. Dishes were piling up in the sink. Bruno and Thibaut were getting restless stamping and blowing in the corral for attention.  
Just as the holiday season was getting ramped up in early December, Ethan concluded the two of them didn’t have the time or skill to ensure the thriving future of Carousel. Some days, interaction with agents required more than eight hours. The intricacy and complexity of the operations were growing profoundly deeper and broader. Their aptitude for securing adequate quantities of accurate, up-to-date data was dwindling even with the help of the twenty agents. Ethan was falling behind in his design and initiation of Black-Ops.  
Exhausted one evening, laid back wearily in George Jack chairs, Ethan wearily agreed with Chester’s suggestion to get out and find some help. They decided to target informal settings in the southern part of Silicon Valley where a person with the appropriate expertise might respond to two handsome, gregarious, jolly guys. Elsa and Nell agreed to exercise the horses and watch the place for a week while Ethan and Chester shopped for a candidate.  
Bundled in leather jackets and plaid mufflers, cowboy hats, and boots, they cheerfully cruised the bookstores, bars, coffee shops, and restaurants in San Jose. Ethan and Chester engaged in conversations when they established the possible choice was an ardent environmentalist. They made arrangements to meet a few people considered potential candidates for dinner, movies, plays, and other events the following week at a location closer to home. The prime candidate, a resident of Orlando, offered to meet them Saturday in a bar in San Francisco.  
As fortune would have it, Ethan neglected his yoga that Saturday. Chester was puzzled at Ethan’s uncharacteristic preoccupation with what to wear. When Chester finally stuck red bows on the toes of Ethan’s cowboy boots and green bows on the hatband of Ethan’s white Stetson, Ethan was happy in his Calvin Klein blue jeans and dark-green sweater decorated with prancing elves.  
Ethan failed to recognize his budding agitation in the festive holiday environment on the narrow streets of San Francisco. He realized he was in a state of elevated excitement when it was too late. Ethan noticed his skin begin to itch and crawl like energy trying to burst out of him as they entered the crowded bar.  
The barroom walls were covered with framed posters of travel destinations: sprawling, exotic cities, pristine-white beaches, alpine ski resorts, and tumbling, white-water rivers. Tall, extravagant floral arrangements were generously scattered around the room on shiny, brass-and-mahogany tables and counters. The lighting was bright the music so loud Ethan could scarcely hear himself.  
The evening blossomed beautifully. Ethan’s virile clowning and erotic repartee while juggling shot-glasses, lemons and limes quickly electrified the crowd. However, the night wilted and withered dramatically.  
The next morning in bed Chester carefully explained Ethan barely managed to escape jail. The intervention of the young man who invited them to the bar, a friend of the owner, had saved him the embarrassment. Minutes later, easygoing Chester, who survived less dramatic incidents of Ethan’s bipolar episodes at home, contacted the owner of the bar. He sat on the edge of the bed with his cell phone repeating his explanation of Ethan’s condition. While Ethan silently rubbed his face with both hands, Chester arranged to make an electronic transfer of funds to cover the restoration for the antique, brass chandeliers, the focal point of Ethan’s aerial, acrobatic performance.  
Wrapping himself in bedding with a pillow over his head, Ethan remained in bed for two days plunged in the dark, stinging depths. He thought about his medication but didn’t seriously consider taking it. He contemplated taking a pellet of Hasammeli gold but considered it too valuable saving it for more extenuating circumstances.  
While Nell cooked breakfast on the third morning, Elsa and Chester wrestled Ethan out of bed to the voices and music of Offenbach’s operetta, Orpheus in the Underworld. Elsa bopped him firmly on the head with a pillow.  
“Get up rump ranger!” Elsa muttered mouth pinched eyes crinkling whacking Ethan on his bare butt ignoring Chester’s expressions pleading her to be gentle.  
“It was easier getting you outta the womb!” Elsa grunted harshly chin tucked brows low. “Want me to tell Chester about some of your childhood escapades? ‘Bout the time you stuck a pin in the electrical socket? The time you bit a hole clear through your tongue while you were shouting jumping off the sofa? The time you let a firecracker go off in your hand? The time I had to get your pecker outta the zipper? Look at it now! You call that a penis?”  
“What do you know about penises Fairy Godmother?” Ethan grinning lunging grabbing her affectionately in a half Nelson on the floor.

Chapter Twelve  
Risk and Culture

The young, enthusiastic candidate Ethan hired, Wade Halter, was a graduate from UC Berkeley with a degree in environmental law who recently passed his bar exam. Wade’s family was among the first people from Oregon Territory to move into northern California in 1848. They were not direct participants in the gold rush but became wealthy San Francisco merchants by provisioning the fortune seekers. They bought a ship abandoned by its crew to prospect for gold. They hauled it onto the mudflats close to shore making it into a home and hardware store.  
Halter’s Hardware survived the six Great Fires between 1849 and 1852 becoming ever wealthier moving onto solid ground in 1855. Their investment in the Folsom-to-Sacramento railroad paid off big when the Transcontinental Railroad into Sacramento was completed in 1869. The Halters were instrumental in the reconstruction of San Francisco after the ’06 earthquake, which leveled the store but left the inventory relatively intact. The family prosperity permitting them to educate their sons at Harvard law and establish the Halter law firm in 1919.  
Wade developed a strong affinity for Ethan and his mission at their first meeting. Ethan’s Bipolar disorder didn’t diminish his interest in becoming a part of Carousel's mission. He thought Ethan was brilliant and hilarious a welcome alternative to the ancient, stuffy law offices of his family.  
Wade was above average in height and build, his thick, curly, blond hair never receiving much attention after his morning shower. He was a somber, laidback, loveable nerd oblivious to how sexy his glasses and rumpled hair made him look. Wade thought Chester was quaint and Chester thought Wade was urbane. Watching them get acquainted discussing the Carousel mission, Ethan thought ‘opposites attract’.  
Ethan offered Wade the third bedroom along with an excellent salary and benefits package. Wade gratefully accepted on condition his two Golden Labradors, Duke and Doug, came with him. Ethan happily agreed, but he installed a cedar-tone, molded-wood, picket fence around four acres to enclose the house, garage, barn, gardens, well and orchard. He didn’t want the dogs interfering with the wildlife.  
Mellow Chester, easygoing Wade, and his dogs, which were well-behaved and quiet while indoors, provided a counterpoint to Ethan’s energy in the household symphony. Harmony prevailed even when drama made the atmosphere electric.  
“We need to redecorate, rearrange,” Wade commented one morning putting on his glasses squinting-gaze roaming around the room. He turned around seemingly noticing for the first time the disharmony of furnishings of the nineteenth-to-twentieth turn of the century with the technology of the twentieth-to-twenty-first.  
Ethan was mildly surprised but amenable to Wade’s suggestion to move some of the art, furnishings, and rugs in the big, front room and study upstairs. Wade explained the move would provide more fluid space on the floor to facilitate movement, and on the walls for the computer screens. Ethan unhesitatingly accepted his suggestions to store some things in the attic and purchase a few relatively obscure decorative items. Ethan and Chester were so involved in their work they barely noticed Wade’s efforts until he announced he was finished.  
“How’s this?” Wade asked cautiously, sipping a Buffalo Amber as they were settling at the dining table for lunch weeks later.  
“Hey!” Chester murmured gazing walking around shirtless, barefoot in his jeans with his avocado, Swiss cheese, and sprout sandwich.  
“Yee! Haw!” Ethan muttered munching on hummus and pita took off his half-moon glasses laying them on the newspaper he was reading. “Seems only yesterday you got started!”  
Chester and Ethan were surprised, pleased, and a bit fascinated with the results. Wade had subtly balanced the earthy, arts-and-crafts décor and California panoramas harmoniously with the array of glossy, high-tech equipment. At first, they were puzzled by the letters four to five inches high made from metal, ceramics, woven materials, or wood. These were dispersed between screens and prints in an undulating line from the front door on the west wall, and along the north wall of the main room up to the dining area.  
“Antiestablishmentarianism!” Chester chuckled when he solved the puzzle from the southeast corner of the room.  
“You an aesthete, urbane nerd,” Chester admiringly quipped eyebrows dancing.  
As Ethan expected, Wade quickly got a firm grip on the Carousel big picture. He was conversant with the Carousel mission, and the algorithms right down to the meanings of the hundreds of symbols in the code. Wade got along well with the twenty agents from the ten western states (Utah excluded for reasons Ethan was unsure he had the intellectual acuity to explain, resorting to ‘Trust me’ when asked why). Wade could rattle off the names and functions of the institutions, state, local, and federal bureaucracies, non-profit concerns, and journalists each agent dealt with in their state without resorting to the list Ethan kept at his desk and on his mobile phones.  
Wade’s most valuable asset was his expertise in acquiring accurate, current data. Ethan was not disappointed in his expectation Wade’s skill would significantly reduce the domain of allowable errors and unknowns, coded Omega.  
When Wade presented his explanations for incorporating additional factors into the Carousel algorithms Ethan usually agreed. After a few weeks, they concluded the new level of multiple design revisions required new computers, one for each algorithm or ‘composition’ as Ethan liked to think of them.  
Wade recommended they hire Burl Alvarez, whose family had been trustworthy friends with the Halters since 1892 when members of both families joined the newly formed Sierra Club. Wade explained Burl was a computer geek in his late thirties who served as analyst and consultant for several Silicon Valley firms. He believed Burl would be the perfect man to assist in the purchase, assembly, installation, and programming of the required hard- and software. Wade explained Burl briefly worked for the Central Intelligence Agency, but he didn’t know in what capacity.  
During the luncheon-interview on the deck in the midday shade of Sequoias, Ethan discovered the Alvarez family were Californios. They were Spanish ranchers, and merchants in California before the Americans took possession after the war with the Spanish ended in 1848.  
On a vast ranch north of the Bay Area, they had a huge herd of Longhorns making their fortune off the hides (California greenbacks), tallow, and horns. They had vineyards producing popular wines until the 1920’s when they began selling most of the land at exorbitant prices. The property eventually falling into the hands of Mondavi, Sonoma- Cutrer, and Ferrari-Carano wineries. The Alvarez’s still had vineyards and cattle ranches serving their steaks and wine exclusively in their restaurants in San Francisco, Sacramento, Santa Barbara, La Holla, and Palm Springs.  
As Chester and Wade were removing dishes and leftovers returning to work, Burl revealed he was a symbolic maestro of the Bay Area fetish and leather community. He also confessed he suffered from an atavistic case of obsessive-compulsive disorder. During their discussion, Ethan complimented Burl on his refreshing honesty. Burl bluntly replied he considered Ethan’s brutal rationality and relentless wittiness characteristic of dangerously intelligent people.  
“Tell me, Ethan,” Burl requested, wearing T-shirt and cargo shorts, leaning back in the wooden lounge padded with rainbow cushions stretching out his legs, “what you hate most.”  
“Imitations of laughter, insincere laughs,” Ethan replied without hesitation lifting his glass of Highland Springs from the wooden table next to his lounge, Franz Liszt’s “Forest Murmurs” drifting from the speakers.  
“You mean like forced, or fake laughter that’s not genuine?” Burl asked arching his eyebrows rubbing both hands over his brown, shaved head interlacing his fingers at the back of his neck arms nearly as hairy as Ethan’s. “That would effectively eliminate most of cinema and stage performances as entertainment, half of TV.”  
“Yeah, Burl, forced, canned, derisive, sarcastic, dry or overconfident laughter, anything that’s not spontaneous, genuinely happy,” Ethan nodding turning his head to see what kind of woodpecker was drilling into one of his trees. “I hate the sound like it’s a disruption to the music of the spheres, harmony of the universe, discord. Authentic laughter is music to my ears.”  
“Hate that more than environmental injustice?” Burl asked squinting, tilting his head forward, wiggling his toes in his sandals.  
“It’s a hatred that goes deeper has longer roots,” Ethan responded twisting back around smiling into Burl’s dark, brown eyes. “Started at a young age before I understood what environmental justice was.”  
“What do you fear most,” Burl’s calm tone and relaxed features exhibiting patient curiosity. He waggled his black mustache dislodging a fly attracted to the bee’s wax holding the curling ends in place.  
“Being in the arena when a bull rider gets his hand stuck in the bull rope,” Ethan said ducking his head dodging the fly. “I was never abused as a child never witnessed another kid abused. I’d equate the experience to watching a child being abused. I can never get to the bull rider as fast as I’d like. Save the guy from serious pain, maybe even an injury ruining his career, some guys don’t survive skull, neck and back injuries. I fear witnessing the kind of injury resulting in permanent loss of physical, or mental health, or death—something I might have prevented, Burl.”  
“Ethan, the One Percent is nothing more nothing less than the Mob, the Mafia on a wealthier, grander, international scale,” Burl said quietly staring steadily, searchingly at Ethan listening solemnly. “They have people killed, they are responsible for deaths and injuries occurring right this moment somewhere on this earth. They ruin lives. In some countries, they are involved in sex trafficking... slavery, Ethan. They formulate policy on boards of directors. They are responsible for the policies of the pharmaceutical and chemical corporations and the drug distribution systems not just here in the United States but worldwide. They wreck industries. They destroy countries. They waste the environment. The One Percent have no conscience. They have citizenship but they have no sincere allegiance to any country. They have no patriotism or regard for anything but their pocketbooks and their families.  
“The One Percent believe in no god,” Burl muttered flatly, leaning forward elbows on knees hands clasped, hairy legs straddling the foot of the lounge. “They don’t believe in Christ, Yahweh, Buddha, or Allah but they use the beliefs of other people in gods to achieve their ends. They don’t care about democracy or communism or any political or economic or religious or social system. They just use those systems to control and manipulate the masses of ignorant fools to enrich themselves.”  
“Yep,” Ethan responded, another swig of spring water nodding holding Burl’s gaze.  
“The One Percent figure that if another global, environmental catastrophe occurs, or pathogens or hydrogen bombs wipe away half the world’s population they’ll just pop off to Mars, the Moon or down into their underground bunkers and wait it out, no problem,” Burl said somberly gesturing to the sky the ground with both hands.  
“You don’t fear them? You don’t hate them?” Burl’s eyes narrowing, face crumpling reflecting his disgust with TOP. “Wade and I, our daddies and granddaddies could tell you scores of revolting, horror stories about TOP crimes against humanity and the environment in the last hundred years in California alone. The Robber Barons of early America in the east have never gone away they’ve just gotten craftier hiding their crimes. Even if they do get caught what happens?  
“What Bernie Madoff did to thousands of people, Ethan?” Burl said gravely, face stony, head canting to the right, eyes searching, toes tapping. “Robbing them of their futures?  
“Regulatory agencies like the Securities Exchange Commission were incompetent in that case… maybe,” Burl’s tone sarcastic face like granite. “The big, international banks that laundered his money? The guys running the banks weren’t stupid but they were complicit. They all knew what was happening. That’s why there was no trial because the banks would have been dragged into it their reputations sullied. Who would dare have asked for accountability from the incompetent SEC and the ignorant, biggest banks in the world?  
“Madoff would have been taken care of by TOP the same way mafia crime bosses take care of snitches,” Burl said, his voice harsh, thick. “Madoff knew he had to protect his wife, children, grandchildren, and his brother from ugly deaths not that it would have been much worse than the tortured lives his greed forced them to live afterward.  
“The One Percent is responsible for the equivalent of Madoff-like crimes annually against hundreds of thousands of folks and the environment across the globe. They just don’t get caught. Or, when they do get caught they’re not held accountable for social- and environmental injustice,” Burl said bitterly, flinging hands in the air resting them on his head briefly dragging his palms down his cheeks exasperated, hands coming down till elbows were back on his knees.  
“Just between you and me, Burl?” Ethan smiling calmly leaning forward scooting down to sit on the foot of the lounge, elbows on knees. He clasped his hands returning the stare mirroring Burl. “I’m just jousting with giants, windmills just for the fun of upsetting the order of things. I’m not committed to the sense of fearing or hating people. I hate the system, Burl.”  
“Okay. Alright. Let’s move on. Is there any Carousel risk assessment procedure, analysis, system?” Burl asked exasperated, nodding wiggling his toes flexing his fingers as though warming up for a task.  
Ethan grinned tapping his forehead. “Forest Murmurs” drifting. Burl sighing rolling eyes shaking his head.  
“That’s an excellent segue for my main interest in asking you to work with Carousel, Burl,” Ethan said quietly crouching closer, the tractor-beam of his eyes pulling Burl closer noses six inches apart. Burl waggling his mustache nervously dark, piercing eyes unwavering.  
“Call it an extracurricular activity. I’d like you to reduce my identity in all domains, legal, digital, whatever, to zero,” Ethan stated emphatically, lips tight, gaze steady. “Shouldn’t be too hard. I have no authentic birth certificate, no Social Security card, no credit cards, no bank accounts in the US. The birth certificates I have are fakes I got so I could get my driver’s licenses and student I.D.s—all different names same face. I’ve never had a social media account. You name the price.”  
“You’re even more scary-dangerous than I’d reckoned, Ethan,” Burl hissed face intense eyes wide blood vessel down the center of his forehead more prominent.  
Burl nodded, whistling between his front teeth, calculating the risks, considering. Intrigued by the unique challenge, Burl raised both hands gripping his chin thumbs along jaws. He watched Ethan grinning at him believing he’s got Burl hooked jerking the line.  
“Then, Burl,” Ethan glancing to see if Chester or Wade were within hearing, “I’d like you to reduce Carousel’s digital and internet identity as low as you can get it. Erase Carousel wherever you find a hint of it. We’ve kept it practically nonexistent, but we’re not as smart about these things as you. You can name your price.”  
“You’re making me uneasy, Ethan,” Burl exasperated at the very thought, heart racing considering the magnitude of the challenge, hoarsely whispering, “From what you’ve told me, Carousel’s field actions are already on the level of United States and Israeli intelligence and military black-ops.”  
“Then, Burl I’d like you to create an artificial intelligence to take over Carousel,” Ethan’s bright eyes and husky whisper matching Burl’s intensity in tone and expression. “No need to name a price. Wade will open and provide you access to whatever off-shore accounts you need.”  
“Man! Ethan!” Burl’s eyes squinting, voice weak croaking as he fell back onto the lounge hands over crumpling face. He never dreamed such an enormous, fascinating challenge would come into his life. “For something like Carousel that’s a lifetime’s work with a dozen assistants.”  
“It’s your life, Burl,” Ethan falling back, hands behind head gazing at Burl. “Can you think of a better way of ensuring Earth for posterity? TOP owns the government, the politicians. The United States system is corrupt, rigged. The elected officials whose vested interest is supposed to be the nation and the nation’s people are the ones rigging the system for TOP. The cycle of Robber Barons will not be changed by people. People die, get killed. AI is the only way to save Earth—ironic but true. Carousel’s AI, your AI, Burl.”  
Burl agreed to begin work in a consultant capacity for Carousel on the condition Ethan let him install a security system on the property. Burl agreed to consider Ethan’s other propositions assessing the possibilities and prospects of success as he became more familiar with Carousel. Ethan didn’t hesitate to consent to the security system but was surprised when he learned Burl meant the entire forty acres.  
When Burl completed his security system with the installation of another computer downstairs and one upstairs displaying images from the six cameras, Ethan realized Chester and Wade were much more at ease and their laughter more relaxed. The dogs were even more laid back.  
#  
In early March 2011, after the first anniversary of the British Petroleum Gulf disaster, Chester and Wade were listening to a report on the Tōhoku earthquake-tsunami and nuclear plant calamity as they worked. Ethan was in the kitchen preparing hummus when he received a call on his cell phone setting his course of action for the year.  
“Hello, Uncle Luke!” Ethan exclaimed cheerfully, wiping his hands on a dishcloth, walking into the front room activating the speaker, placing the phone on his desk, eyes bright. “How are you?”  
“Well, I’m beginning to think I’m getting old,” the old fellow grumbled.  
“Aw, Uncle Luke,” Ethan laughed, reaching out to rumple Wade’s hair, “you know all about the Hindu Maya world of illusion and the wrathful and peaceful demons within us leading us into such delusions.”  
“Yes, yes,” Uncle Luke replied in a dismissive tone clearing his throat, “as fortune would have it, dealing, or not dealing with illusion, or Maya or our delusions is the essence of human nature. Be that as it may.  
“I’ve discovered something from a friend I thought I would pass along. You can judge its worth, and decide how much of your time and energy it deserves,” he said as Ethan strolled around the room glancing at the screens. He paused for a moment at Chester’s desk to kiss him on the forehead affectionately caress his sideburns with the back of his knuckles.  
“The son of an old associate of my friend is a young man who came to the United States about ten years ago,” Uncle Luke rumbled. “I believe he is your age and is still having a hard time adjusting to American ways. He led a rather adventurous sort of life traveling around the world with his father, an influential and powerful person in many circles. The father and I have several mutual contacts and associates, but I’ve never met him. Globally speaking he’s in TOP, but he has no interests in politics or running the world.”  
Ethan crouched to pet Doug and Duke curled up on a sofa. Both dogs immediately came to life, and he walked to the front door to let them out.  
“The son, Gurd Khase,” Uncle Luke continued, voice somber, “is a melancholy, controversial figure and could conceivably be at the epicenter of problems, spreading instabilities in New Mexico. Albuquerque is his home.  
“He is unpopular among his fellow archaeologists throughout the Southwest,” Uncle Luke said with a weary sigh. “Some of them may not be happy until they’ve crucified young Khase. They’re ignorant provincials who have no idea of the international connections of his family with powerful, reputable archaeologists and museum curators worldwide who would be willing to attest Khase’s sterling reputation.”  
Ethan slowly sank into the lotus position as the old man mentioned New Mexico. Wade and Chester abruptly stopped what they were doing, exchanging glances, quietly watching him. Ethan nodded soberly. His eyes flicked to Wade and Chester, smiling reassuringly.  
“He doesn’t laugh much might be the best way to phrase it for you to understand,” Uncle Luke suggested after a brief pause. “Mirth tangling with melancholy is a phrase that has become repetitious in my aging mind since my friend called and I thought of you. You know, like the symbolic masks of tragedy and comedy of theater?”  
“Sounds like a curious guy,” Ethan interjected trying to remain calm. He raised his hands to place at the back of his head, slowly rotating his torso stretching.  
“Yes sir, the New Mexico algorithm is the most troublesome, problematic of them all at this point. There are indications of something unusual in the works, possibly something imminent,” Ethan paused, crossing his eyes, frowning, wrinkling his brow. Wade turned back to his work. Chester crossed his eyes in response.  
“Climate change may be having a greater impact there than in most states if declining snowpack and rainfall are to be considered legitimate measures,” Ethan started a litany of New Mexico woes. “The drought is causing the bark and pine beetles to increase the amount of standing dead timber, and the combination of drought and beetles are bad for the wildfire situation. The governor is the puppet of the oil and gas industry, and her dunce, Senator Dumuntzi, is undermining the past and future efforts of the State Environmental Improvement Board. The state has the biggest gap between the poor and the rich. A chronically high poverty rate, a declining GDP, and a no-growth-rate forecast. Not to mention the state has been designated a High-Intensity Drug Trafficking Area, and cheap Mexican methamphetamines are displacing the local production labs and sucking money from the economy. And they’re considering starting up uranium mining again when they haven’t cleaned up the mess from the first round….”  
“The flip side of the coin may be of interest to you and your algorithms,” the old fellow interrupted voice firm sensing Ethan’s escalating mood. “Young Khase, who’s finished his doctoral classwork at Harvard is writing his dissertation. Central to the thesis, I’m told is the young man’s novel, controversial, and comprehensive definition of culture.  
“The concept of culture has never been satisfactorily defined, much like the concepts of intelligence, consciousness or complexity theory, or algorithm, defy definition,” Uncle Luke said. “If I recall correctly, the best choice of words presently is algorithm characterization.  
“I’ll paraphrase something you once said,” Uncle Luke cleared his throat again and grumbled. “The threads of environmental justice and social justice, are inextricably interwoven into one fabric characterizing the integrity of humanity. With that in mind, I thought his definition of culture might prove useful in clarifying issues in your algorithms.”  
“Thanks, Uncle Luke,” Ethan said gratefully. “I’ll be giving New Mexico some personal attention, quality time, soon. Take care.”  
Deactivating the phone, Ethan rose to his feet assuming the yoga pose Mountain. Chester quietly, cautiously turned to resume work. The Land of Enchantment was a subject tentatively broached only after Ethan finished a meditation session. After meditation, Ethan’s compulsion to get out and take the bull by the horns was not so overpowering. Guessing at Chester’s thoughts, Ethan winked at him and closed his eyes.

Chapter Thirteen  
Shock and Compulsion

In June, a few days after the largest wildfire in Arizona’s history started in Apache Sitgreaves National Forest, Chester dropped Ethan off on the western slopes of the Sierras not far northwest of Carson City, Nevada. Ethan began his roundabout trek to Albuquerque checking on environmental hot spots along the way. His backpack was loaded with face masks, goggles, sterile gloves, and a virtual laboratory of devices and solutions for determining the presence of toxic chemicals.  
As previously planned one of Carousel’s agents picked him up wherever he requested during his trip discussing business until Ethan was dropped off at a remote location. In this way, he worked his way quickly through Nevada, Arizona, and New Mexico. The trip was relatively uneventful except for the incident in some mountainous terrain in northeastern Arizona where a concealed Ethan spooked the horse of a persistently nosy cowboy. Ethan had time to think and plan.  
Along the way, Ethan interrupted a few secret, nighttime meetings held by eco-terrorists, or drug smugglers. His dumb, clueless act and clumsy, amateur juggling was so hilariously convincing each group invited him to hang with them for a while. Ethan correctly believed his habitual attire of long-sleeve, plaid shirt, jeans, and worn cowboy hat and boots and an assortment of colorful bandannas convinced people he was a harmless, local yokel. Several of them exchanged cell phone numbers with Ethan.  
#  
Ethan was traveling northeast playing a medley of Mozart concertos on his ocarina a few days after checking on the progress of environmental restoration measures imposed on the vast defunct copper mine in southwestern New Mexico. He noticed circling vultures to the north.  
Passing west of Magdalena into a section of the Cibola National Forest, he discovered a trail of curious tracks winding between the cactus, sagebrush, and pinyons. Wiping the sweat from his eyes with a bandanna, he crouched to examine the ground. He decided the footprints were those of people wearing strips of carpet over their shoes. These impressions in the dry, sandy soil almost wholly obliterated the imprints of horseshoes of the mounted animal preceding them. Apprehensively, Ethan quickened his pace as the sun and vultures lowered in the hot air.  
Ethan was profoundly shocked and heartsick on discovering the naked boy crumpled in a patch of profusely blooming prickly pear cactus buzzing with bees. Swiftly releasing his backpack, Ethan pulled on a pair of sterile gloves from his lab supplies. Swiping away flies and ants, he gently removed the small, brown body from the spines and bright yellow blossoms. Startled by the surprising, sudden intake of breath from the boy, Ethan quickly settled him on the ground. He ripped open his medical kit, carefully pouring water into his mouth until the boy reflexively swallowed. Sweaty hands shaking, Ethan cleaned and applied antiseptic and bandages to the wounds.  
Ethan did as much as he could in saving the boy’s life and making him comfortable. He plucked one of his phones from his pack. Putting on his glasses with trembling fingers, he checked the GPS coordinates on an internet map at the point directly west on Highway 25. He dialed the number of his Santa Fe agent. The ringtone sounded once.  
“I’ll text you coordinates on Highway 25 as soon as I cut this connection,” Ethan said hurriedly, removing his glasses dripping with sweat, “please be there as soon as possible to take a kid to the hospital. You’re where? Great! Hurry!”  
Hands quivering, Ethan checked all the bandages. He wrapped the boy in a clean sheet, repacking, cradling him in his arms, walking east as the sun began to set. The slope was uphill for the first hour, but it was downhill the second hour. The darkness causing Ethan to slow his pace concentrating on the rugged terrain watching for rattlers coming out to hunt.  
Ethan almost wept at the sight of the classic, antique, black Ford pickup truck parked on the shoulder of the highway. Pitching his pack into the truck bed and wiping the sweat from his face with a bandanna, he settled in the passenger seat with the boy in his arms. Ethan sat eyes closed against the blast from the A/C vent silently, tensely to the hospital. The agent, bewildered by the situation and his silence, didn’t question him.  
She had witnessed Ethan’s emotional turmoil in response to environmental and social injustices several times in the past. On those occasions, Ethan somehow managed to miraculously change, twisting his sorrow, or anger into hilarity. She had watched as many powerful, gripping expressions transforming his face as she had ever seen on the faces of the Silver Screen, The Playhouse, or opera.  
With a furtive, anxious glance from the road, she saw the boy open his eyes slightly and lift his small hand to feebly grasp the bandannas around Ethan’s neck. She was shocked to see the turbulence in Ethan’s features settle into an uncharacteristic, blank stillness, catatonic. A more characteristic response would have been for him to smile at the boy encouragingly, but Ethan just stared straight ahead rigid.  
Dispassionately, Ethan instructed his agent to remain out of sight of the security cameras as they approached the hospital emergency room entrance. He gave her the boy, tying a bandanna around her head so his cowboy hat fit her. Firmly and gently, he pulled the brim low so with her head bowed her features were obscured.  
On the trip to Santa Fe, Ethan quietly answered all her questions. Arriving at her home, he refused to enter the house climbing up into the barn hayloft with his backpack.  
Trembling and dripping sweat, Ethan rifled through his things scattering them around in the hay. He stripped, opened the loft doors standing in the hot motionless air for a moment staring up into the starry heights. Deeply inhaling the scents of cottonwood and pinyon, he spread his sleeping bag at the edge of the doorway, assuming the Mountain pose attempting to calm himself.  
His breathing becoming natural, Ethan grudgingly addressed his compulsion to change the order of things, why it was his reason for living. He desperately attempted to focus on the issue, but he failed. Sidestepping the issue and attaining a state of euphoria in a maneuver of the psyche no yogi would believe possible, Ethan slipped into the Underworld.

Chapter Fourteen  
Country Music and Fate

Ethan’s avatar assumed a form similar to mythic South Pacific undertakers: skin like ash, face smudged black with campfire-charcoal mixed with grease drippings, bald head, body less than six feet tall and cadaverous. He glanced down past the bone through the septum of his dark nose at the shimmering, prismatic grass skirt. Reaching up to explore his headdress, Ethan discovered it festooned and embellished with enough long, flashy feathers, including ultraviolet and infrared plumage from birds of paradise, to strike fear and awe into the hearts of any Papua New Guinea aborigine. His arms couldn’t extend to the tallest tips, but the fringe of lower dazzling plumes curved out and down to the level of his eyes.  
He felt it shifting slightly, but continuously on his skull as though searching for a satisfactory position to roost. Ethan thought the sensation was like countless, tiny suction cups on the pads of lizard feet on his scalp.  
Ethan fingered his lustrous, shell bracelets and anklets partially filled with pebbles. They sounded comical when he moved, like television and film rattlesnakes, an imitation nothing like the real thing. After a few experimental steps and gestures, he moved with such precision they rattled only when he intended. He checked his round, obsidian mirror secure in the scintillating jade case, suspended from a sparkling, fiber cord around his neck. He patted the golden pellets and his ocarina in the bag secured with a leather strap at his waist.  
Ethan briefly glanced around at the magnificent, towering growth of glowing, verdant, ancient oak, hickory, and hazel in the Mag Mell forest and up through the luminous branches at the starless, indigo sky. Night in the Netherworld required a few more moments for initial adjustment and the contemplation necessary for sustaining an enhanced presence of mind.  
Just as in the daytime, there were no shadows cast and no light or images reflected on any surface but at night everything glowed and sparkled more vividly from the inner sources of energy of each plant and creature. Ethan often thought of the nights as embellished by a computer-graphics shader-program operating on unusual brightness and contrast instructions. His eyes and his mind had to adjust to these qualities of light represented in some of the art of post-impressionists Van Gogh, Gauguin, Rousseau, and Toulouse-Lautrec, men contemporary with the Russian composer, Tchaikovsky.  
Ethan sighed, head bowing abruptly chin resting heavily on his chest headdress flouncing. He realized tonight the dismal ambiance was augmented by a composition of Tchaikovsky’s he didn’t enjoy, the melancholy Symphony Number Four, commonly known as Fate. The faint strains of the instruments in the first movement were gathering strength as the finale of Hector Berlioz’s sorrowful, hallucinatory and dream-like Symphonie Fantastique faded in the distance. Now a one-hour-long, gloomy tempest was following on the heels of another.  
Resigned yet resolute, Ethan raised his head glancing around feeling confident no one but the trees observed his movements. He plunged into the clear pool occupied by the single, scintillating trout. He watched its impassive, satiny eye swivel toward him in a reserved manner its glossy body shifting languidly out of his path as he swam into the cavern. Instantly, he was accompanied by a massive school of luminous, white minnows darting and diving playfully among the twinkling, effervescence streaming from the headdress and skirt.  
The swift current of the water would have shot Ethan tumbling out into the air beyond the roaring waterfall into Ekera if he hadn’t been prepared to grab an ancient, fossilized swallow’s nest just to the right of the outlet with his right hand. His mood didn’t permit him to laugh in delight as he usually did with every such challenge he encountered on his trips between dimensions.  
Taking a deep breath, he tucked his legs against his chest as his body swept out in an arc. He grabbed a second nest with his left hand planting his feet against the wall of stone slick with spray from the falls. He was able to perform this feat with blind accuracy from memory because the sopping, flamboyant headdress slipped down over his eyes.  
The nests, virtually petrified and rooted in the damp rock of the cliff, glimmered faintly blue, indigo, and slate-gray blending with surrounding natural stone. Righting his headgear, Ethan descended like a rock climber to a cave midway down behind the thundering, sparkling falls. The second leg of his journey interminable through the twisting labyrinth dimly lit by the sparkling, fluttering moths and pulsing glowworms suspended from the cathedral-like ceiling. Without the headdress, there would have been more than one knot forming on his head from stalactites as Ethan burst out into the towering pines of Shipap.  
Remarkably, Fate was still ambient. The mood was even more depressing in Shipap. The contrasts were more acute. The brightness of creatures and plants starker against the night.  
Ethan spotted in the distant sky to the south the monstrous, form of a colossal, radiant tortoise, symbolic of the drought desiccating the American Southwest rotating like a wheel. Its carapace resembled the boiling gold, scarlet, and amber surface of the sun. Its eyes appeared as black as the twisting vortices of sunspots impassively observing the homes and people melting across the land. He contemplated the bizarre severity of bright colors and darkness while he smeared the remnants of the grease-and-charcoal around on his face.  
Ethan grimaced and cringed involuntarily cowering at the sight to the north of a giant, Big-pharma monster resembling a winged Chimera slithering across the dark sky. It showered the earth with luminous opioid feces, glittering, mite-ridden feathers drifting down to the ground crushing smothering people. Feeling helpless and depressed, he turned away from the sight of the glistening droppings clinging onto the poor unfortunates and dragging them down to the earth where the luminescent parasites attacked devouring them alive.  
In the river off to his left the gleaming, languid tentacle of a gigantic, medusa-like, octopus-jellyfish, symbolic of drug cartels, crept upstream smoothly, stealthily sinister, glittering quicksilver. Grimly, Ethan followed the course of the river south watching the scintillating suction cups on the huge, stinging tentacle ripping away pieces of the land beneath modest homes smashing them mercilessly paralyzing, maiming, drowning the inhabitants.  
Strolling farther from the riverbank, Ethan watched a ragged flock of dusty sheep trudging westward. They were herded by a spectral, crepuscular, human-coyote, White-eye Riddle with a long, gleaming, blue lizard tail. It slithered across the ground occasionally lifting into the air to whirl and snap like a bullwhip.  
Ethan sensed his headdress hovering above his skull as though considering flying away. His grass skirt was beginning to irritate his skin just as he caught the strains of the energetic, Western, line-dance tune, “Indian Outlaw”. It was oddly in sync with the Tchaikovsky symphony. Jerking out his ocarina, he desperately attempted to compose an atonal counterpoint thinking such a piece of music was absurd, impossible.  
On his right, he caught sight of a glowing mansion where radiant Riddles were whooping it up on an expansive, golden deck sparkling champagne jetting high into the air from a sprawling, ornate, crystal fountain. Drawing closer, Ethan watched flaming, flickering, alchemical symbols dancing around below the deck. All of them were chirping, twittering, cheeping merrily, hopping, skipping, shuffling, shimmying, and twisting frantically in an intertwining line dance forming equations for chemical compounds to the first bars of “Cotton Eyed Joe”. Struggling mightily, Ethan abruptly fell into the atonal composition he was searching for on his ocarina. He felt synchronizing the counterpoint as he strolled toward the house was a mental combat testing every fiber of his mind.  
Ethan sensed his shapeshifting, avatar skin vanishing like frozen smoke thawing. The bizarre tune locked in his mind making him a little disoriented as he hurriedly stashed the ocarina in the pouch with the pellets. He noted the skirt and headdress had disappeared but the mirror was still suspended around his neck.  
Ethan could hardly think straight walk straight on the cloven hooves as big as a Clydesdale’s. Holding his head up under the weight of his horns spreading like a big, Longhorn bull’s and keep the composition together in his mind was an exhausting challenge. He involuntarily snorted causing him to hiccup. Lifting his hand to his mouth he briefly fingered the luxuriant beard. Ethan cleared his throat humming the atonal counterpoint.  
With his left hand shaggy with radiant crimson and amber filaments of plasma weaving in the air like the tentacles of a sea anemone at the bottom of the ocean, Ethan grasped the banister. He carefully ascended the winding stairs up to the festivities as the band switched to “Boot Scootin’ Boogie”. The Tchaikovsky symphony swelled, Ethan’s mind scrambled, straining to the limits of his atonal creativity to keep pace. He realized his humming must sound like the drunken ramblings of a mad man.  
Ethan felt the surface of his body crawling, swirling. He realized the half-man, half-beast usually compressed and hidden by the avatar skin was now fully exposed. He looked down to see his glimmering, cloven, goat hooves clomp on the golden steps sparks flying. In his peripheral vision, now exceptionally wide, he saw the tips of his coruscating, golden, ribbed horns as long as his arms. His small, cadaverous avatar now fully transformed into a tall, brawny, satyr-like creature bigger than the other Riddles.  
With a glance, Ethan assessed the scene. A bright, shimmering rainbow of banners, balloons, and bunting. Gleaming French provincial, wrought-silver tables, chairs, and benches. Planters and pots brimming with exuberantly blossoming, fluorescent roses, geraniums, begonias, and peony. Shimmering portable barbecue grills, mini-bars, and canapé-laden tables on casters attended by long-haired, bearded, half-men-half-bear Riddles almost as big as Ethan. Each grizzly Riddle wearing a dazzling, short, scarlet tuxedo jacket and bowtie. Ethan noted big bulges beneath the handkerchiefs in their spacious pockets.  
To prevent his sweeping horns from interfering with gleaming high-hair and sparkling hats in the crowd, Ethan turned his head as little as possible. He nodded politely in silent greeting to those who made eye contact. All the celebrants were Riddles resembling upright wolves or goats with the heads and torsos of humans. Most of them wore extravagant, fleecy robes, cloaks, or capes billowing thunderclouds trimmed with luminous, golden, or purple embroidery glistening rain. Their faces were shades of pale vermillion, russet, or magenta roiling like languid lava. Many sporting a shimmering halo-tiara above the assortment of horns and long, hairy ears. Each held a glowing, ornate, toy weapon, or a fiery religious book, or both.  
From what Ethan could hear, they were making deals, whispering in a conspiratorial manner, exchanging shiny coins, or tokens shaped like flattened bullets. The clink of the coins was in rhythm with the twittering of the alchemical symbols and the music and lyrics of “Chattahoochee”, another line-dance tune defiantly modulating melancholy Fate. Ethan hummed improvising strenuously, steadily to maintain his unadulterated netherworld appearance.  
Towering over most of the Riddles was a White-eye draped in a robe resembling a looming, black storm-cloud. Jutting from the collar was the spectral, over-sized head of a mountain lion, eyes round and white as two full moons.  
The White-eye standing next to him wore a shining, silver, diaphanous gown imprinted with a sacred text in golden letters flashing like the lights of an emergency vehicle. The garment was designed and arranged to accommodate her twinkling, white wings. A sparkling, gem-encrusted diadem hovered in a tipsy fashion over and around her big coif of glossy, platinum bubbles.  
A pair of blazing bandoliers crisscrossed the chest of her companion, a stout, swarthy White-eye with glimmering, iridescent tattoos evident through the flaming scarlet and ocher fur on his chest. He sported burnished, spiked horns and cloven hooves, and a satyr goatee. His frequent, loud snorting threatening the security of the cigar pressed between his lips.  
Ethan managed to get a brief glimpse of their reflections holding his mirror low in his left hand before he snapped the case closed. He was not surprised to recognize the faces on the dark surface: Senator Dumuntzi, Colonel Lagash, and Linda Jo Fontaine, targets of Carousel. The abrupt sound of their ghastly, unbearable, over-confident laughter suddenly made him shudder. Ethan cringed and choked silencing the shifting, atonal composition he had been struggling so desperately to maintain in his mind. When the music in his head ceased Ethan felt his form suddenly diminishing being enveloped in the skin of his avatar like shrink-wrap.  
The spell was broken. The rainbow grass-skirt, the flamboyant headdress, the dull, black face, the shiny bone in his nose, and the rattle-bracelets and anklets motionless. Ethan didn’t breathe. The drummer missed a beat.  
None of the celebrants looked at him continuing to chat as though nothing was amiss. Eyes swiveling, Ethan caught sight of the half-men-half-bears. Instantly and smoothly, each was abandoning their stations to hoist silver trays laden with hors-d’oeuvres.  
Tuxedo jackets and bowties scintillating, dark hair glossy, the bear-men started circulating among the guests, none appearing to pay the slightest attention to Ethan. Ethan shuffled toward the stairs eyes darting left and right in his dark face like comets darting in the night sky. He saw the bear-men were swiftly revolving around him in ever-tighter orbits, the grotesque laughter, and animated conversation escalating exposing the building tension. The band loudly playing “Watermelon Crawl” oddly, impossibly in sync with the Tchaikovsky symphony. The radiant Drought-Tortoise wheeled slowly in the indigo sky dancing with the slithering, crepuscular Big-pharma Chimera.  
Instant pandemonium did not descend on the party when Ethan vigorously twisted his right ankle but the band abruptly stopped playing with a smash of cymbals and a twang of strings. All tweeting and chirruping, chatter and laughter, clatter, and clink ceased. The only sounds deep inhalations, the swish and splash of champagne on the crystal fountain. This protracted moment filled with the rigidity of breathlessness, eyeballs swiveling downward. When Ethan twisted his left ankle pandemonium did break loose greatly augmented by his intense episode of manic glee.  
“Rattler!” several panicky voices bellowed, screams and shrieks rising all around.  
Ethan felt the thumps as the guitars hit the deck with a loud twang. He noticed the intoxicated drummer remaining stubbornly seated, howling as though calling his pack to rally. Following a smash on the cymbals, he abruptly plunged into a mad, pounding in rhythm with the explosively booming doom of the Tchaikovsky symphony.  
Grabbing a glittering silver bench, Ethan lifted it over his head knocking the headdress to the back of his skull. He threw his head back cackling like an orgasmic witch. Wide-eyed with surprise, Ethan was momentarily captivated by unleashing his insane, full-throated, gleeful rage. He staggered backward crazily waving the heavy bench before righting himself.  
More screaming, howling and yelling erupting from a hundred throats and as many Riddles scattering in all directions glittering hats, diadems and tiaras flying tumbling. Ethan leaping onto a gleaming mini-bar sending it sailing eastward on its wheels. As he passed them, Ethan swung the bench at bouquets of bobbing balloons and streaming bunting. Cackling madly, he ripped them from their moorings thoroughly entangling the mess in his grass skirt and streaming headdress. Gliding to the accompaniment of a drum roll and cymbal clash, swinging the bench smashing the glimmering, crystal fountain. Grinning furiously, eyes wide in his black face he watched the flashing shards fly through the air. Shrieking Riddles scampering, scuttling, colliding, tumbling, tangling. Laughing shrill, ear-piercing imitations of terror from the alchemical symbols.  
Ethan heard the clangor of dropping trays and cymbals clashing. Sailing past, he glimpsed a shimmering bear-man withdraw a Taser from his pocket. Shrieks, squeals, and screeching rising in volume and pitch. The drummer howling. Ethan cackling. Capsizing furniture thumping and thudding over onto the deck. Twinkling crystal smashing. Shiny holy books and toy weapons banging on the floor. Pounding hooves and paws shaking the deck an earthquake. Ethan swaying to keep his balance, the heavy cart under his feet bouncing along roughly over the debris.  
The drummer’s merry, wolf-like howling ascending into a melodious, gleeful yodel. Tapping the cymbals and thumping the bass in a restrained, stalking rhythm tenuous lightning in the massive storm clouds of the symphony.  
Ethan glimpsed through his shroud of bobbing balloons and billowing bunting the twisting, hopping, stomping, flaming alchemical symbols. They were suddenly climbing the stairs. They appeared on the deck mindlessly shrieking, squawking, line-dancing to Tchaikovsky, majestic chaos. Discovering ecstasy in his rage, spine shivering, Ethan whooped and howled.  
“YEE! HA—!”  
The whoop was strangled in Ethan’s throat. He winced and laughed wickedly when one electrode fired from a Taser hit him in the thigh. The second of the pair struck the bench sending a spray of sparks into the bundle of bouncing, glowing balloons and fluttering bunting engulfing Ethan. He pitched the bench at the approaching bear-man as the mini-bar came to a jarring stop against balusters. Ethan weaved a gaily festooned willow in a hurricane. The bear-man went down with a loud, angry growl and resounding thud.  
Ethan plucked the projectile from his leg. Leaping onto a small table, shooting off northward. The drummer yodeling delightedly pounding the drums. Chirping, twittering, cheeping scores of gleaming symbols jumping in the air in unison rotating 360 degrees landing to skip and hop around the deck. Ethan merrily kicking off two of them settling on the table at his feet. The headdress abruptly flouncing to the top of his head suction gripping his scalp, perkily shifting glimmering balloons and luminous bunting assembling a tidy nest.  
“YEE! HAW!” Full-throated, head thrown back terrifying the Riddles into higher volumes of shrieks and screeches accelerating flight.  
Ethan heard the last of the wolf and goat Riddles screaming and trampling into the house, tripping down the stairs, tumbling over the railings. Realizing in the thinning crowd he would be an easier target, he crouched the grass skirt and bunting smoking.  
“Yahoo!” Ethan cackled insanely. He battled his blinding, newly acquired, bobbing, smoldering outfit in an attempt to determine the positions of the bear-men. Racing toward the house drummer’s yodeling rising in pitch. He caught sight of one burly bear-man dodging and kicking at the scintillating, line-dancing symbols.  
Swiveling his head, on the other side of the shimmering, wobbling, smoldering mass Ethan saw his antagonists trying to get a clear shot at his skinny torso. A loud pop from his left. The sensation of his headdress flying off with a sharp squeak to Ethan’s right indicating the position of another Taser. The yodel wavering on a high note. The table rolling, banging to a stop against a glistening grill aromatic with sizzling steaks. Ethan planted his foot against it. He forcefully shoved it in the direction of the pop. He was rewarded with the sound of a sudden jarring impact, a loud, screaming explicative. The thumping of a big body on the floor clashing cymbals. Loud, surprised, aghast chirping and tweeting from the rainbow of symbols.  
Ethan hopped to the floor. The balloons beginning to pop from the heat of his flaming skirt. Cartwheeling, tumbling to the accompaniment of a dramatic drum roll and soaring yodel. The jade locket slapping his face. Ethan ripped off his fiery skirt and exploding balloons a moment before his final landing. The gleaming, hopping, skipping symbols sweeping away like a receding ocean wave before him. Ebbing in his aftermath continuing their dance angry, disgruntled chirruping, shrill twittering. Ethan dodged another set of electrodes gyrating crazily past his head. The drummer lightly and rapidly tapping his cymbals yodeling exuberantly.  
“YEE! HAW!” Naked chest heaving, lips stretching to their limits sweating black-face running onto his chest. Breathing hard wreathed in lingering, glimmering smoke, Ethan snatched the jade locket opening it. He pretended to look inside, twisting it around. He extending his right arm toward the two, glossy, gleaming bear-men approaching with sparkling cattle prods. His left arm battling several bright, glistening balloons trailing bunting still bobbling and wobbling from strings entangled in his arms. Ethan was fervently hoping the bear-men would look into the mirror without hesitating.  
The drummer dropped his drumsticks, choking on a high note gurgling, thumping onto the floor. The glistening symbols seemed not to notice dancing rhythmically to the lightning Tchaikovsky movement losing rhythm the maestro succumbing to thunderous, chaotic melancholy. Ethan tensing for the impacts the bear-men stumbling through the mindless, twirling symbols.  
“Look!” Ethan exclaimed wiggling the hand holding the mirror when the cattle prods were mere inches from his chest.  
Both bear-men reacted differently to the recognition of themselves when they looked into the reflections of their own eyes in the corporeal world. Nevertheless, their psyches shattered irreparably. Within seconds they were dead from the shock falling towering trees crushing and mashing several riotously chirping, neon alchemical symbols.  
Abruptly returning to the physical dimension, Ethan tore through all his scattered possessions until he found the Hasammeli pellets. He downed one with a long swig of water from his canteen.

Chapter Fifteen  
Bashful and Tom Bombadil

Ethan’s agent drove him to the Santa Fe National Forest the following morning where he hiked southward. The hot, still air was heavy with the scent of the big pines. He was aware yet again someone was following and watching him. He suspected it was that curiously persistent cowboy he nearly killed in the Chuska Mountains of Arizona by spooking his horse on a narrow mountain trail. Considering the possibility one of Carousel’s victims or targets was finally on to him, Ethan sauntered through the hushed forest all senses alert.  
Greeting and chatting with the scarce wildlife, Ethan accompanied a few of the more friendly critters daring the sun and heat going his way. The first evening he spent playing his ocarina, wandering a short distance on the thick mat of pine needles, settling naked into yoga meditation, and diving into the Underworld to confer with his spy ring. He did not visit Brónach-tarbh in Kur.  
Ethan now knew the corresponding identity of the netherworld Riddle to be Gurd Khase in the physical world. Ethan received from his Santa Fe agent an uncommonly thorough file on the man Uncle Luke named as well as information and photographs of Gurd’s mother, several of his key employees and his few friends. He was stunned when he saw the photograph matching the reflection of Brónach-tarbh he saw in his obsidian mirror.  
On the final day of his trek to Albuquerque, Ethan was equally stunned to see a dear friend of Gurd Khase sitting on a horse staring at a dark horseman on the opposite side of a natural spring. The horseman was the cowboy Ethan came close to killing in the Arizona Chuskas.  
#  
I’ll never forget Friday afternoon, June 24, 2011, after a long, hard, hot, and tiring week at the veterinarian clinic. I checked my text messages finding one from my closest friend privy to my wretched past and all my hopes and dreams for the future. Dama wrote:  
Sam, the meteor has landed in the Santa Fe National Forest Espanola District Caja del Rio traveling south.  
Sitting in my truck feeling exhausted, I hit the ignition, backed around, hooked up the horse trailer, and strolled to the office to raid the refrigerator. I phoned my neighbor chatting, asking her to feed my dogs, Bullwinkle, Rocky, and African Gray parrots, Caesar, and Cleopatra. I showered and fell asleep on the cot kept for those occasions I felt the need to keep an eye on one of our patients overnight.  
I dreamed of Dama in a glittering gown juggling sparkling, emerald peyote buttons, gamboling with elephant-headed Ganesha in the jungle with monkeys, tigers, and a dazzling, white unicorn. Waking before dawn, I stretched remembering my childhood fantasies in Indian of owning a horse.  
I was ecstatic eight years ago when Gurd told me I could pick a foal from one of his mother’s Kabarda mares. Friends suggested I name her Snow White, but in jest, I named her Bashful. She was good company for convalescing horses, mules, and burrows at the clinic.  
I pulled on my boots, packed some food and bottles of water from the cabinets and frig as I ate a breakfast of yogurt, granola, and fruit. After I fed Lad and Becket, the German shepherd guard-dogs, I loaded my provisions, saddle, and tack in the back of the pickup. I checked on the stock in the corrals before walking to Bashful’s small barn.  
Softly nickering, ears perked in the first light of sunrise; she seemed to sense this wasn’t just another Saturday morning ride on the open range. I checked my impulse to pull out my mobile and take her picture one more time. Talking to her, I rubbed her face and nose, checked her hooves and shoes, and quickly groomed her pure, white coat.  
“We’re going up into the forest today, Bashful,” murmuring in a sing-song fashion to the tune of “The Yellow Brick Road”. I whistled the melody while walking her to the trailer, securing the door, driving north from Bernalillo.  
Arriving at the horse camp in the National Forest, I saddled Bashful. I stuffed my provisions in saddlebags while I read the warning signs about the high risk for forest fires because of the drought. Pulling on my gloves and straw hat, I climbed into the saddle. Bashful stepped onto the trail, while I hummed “It’s a Wonderful World” made famous by the voice of Louis Armstrong.  
The morning sky was clear the scent of pine strong. The air was dry sucking the moisture out of my skin, sweat evaporating before it could pop out of the pores. The forest was silent and still in the scorching heat.  
The nearest clean water was a spring-fed pool about five or six miles to the south. I figured the meteor-man might eventually work his way down there for a dip after a parching-hot day of hiking. I was anxious to meet him, hoping Neve Khase’s interpretation of Gurd’s dream proved accurate.  
The seemingly peaceful silence of the pine forest gradually morphed into simmering, breathless tension after about an hour of traveling at a walking pace. Bashful felt it as well, but she took her cue from me remaining calm and alert. After another hour, I felt the sensation of neutral tension in the lower, pinyon forest gliding into a negative, sullen resentment. I had not seen one pinyon jay, or raven in the blue sky, not a single deer, rabbit, or chipmunk in the shade of the green boughs. I sensed someone following and watching us, and so did Bashful ears flicking, swiveling.  
I didn’t draw rein when a hundred yards above the pond I spotted, among the pinyon, a man sitting on his horse. I recognized him immediately as one of our clients.  
Manny Elizardo is an excellent patron who pays in cash and brings all his horses to the clinic regularly. He is a man good to his horses but rumored to be a bad character. He looks the part, lean, leathery, and dark with sharp features and the eyes of an outlaw. The wildflowers blossoming around the water’s edge did little to soften the sight of the man.  
I knew Manny was a horse whisperer, and his method of taking wild horses from the open range was long and difficult, but gentle. He spent a lot of time periodically visiting bands of mustangs throughout the Southwest gaining the trust of the young, spirited colts. When the herd stallion kicked them out when they were two to three years old, Manny adopted them into his care.  
Manny gently trained and kept the best for himself, maintaining a string of four beautiful geldings, which were all dark in color because he did a lot of his work at night he claimed. He sold all the others at a high price to men who worked the range, needing horses knowing how to deal with the conditions out there twenty-four, seven.  
Allegedly, Manny was discharged dishonorably from the Marines. The guy always wore desert fatigues, a military-style knife sheathed in his belt, and a dark hat and boots. Rumor on the range, which we heard a lot at the clinic, claimed Manny was a sergeant under Buddy Joe Lagash’s command in Afghanistan. He was believed to work for the old colonel in some capacity on the dark side of the Lagash business. It was common knowledge he kept a Derringer holstered inside each boot. The large hand resting on his thigh was inches from the rifle in the saddle scabbard.  
At the age of forty-something, he lived in a trailer on the property of his mother and step-father, both Mohegans from the east. Their land extended along the southern border of the National Forest so I suppose it was no surprise to find him here although I could not help being wary. He was at least as tall as I at five-eleven and more than ten years older. I probably outweighed him by ten pounds at one hundred eighty, but I doubt my skills acquired as a half-cast, street kid in Indian could match those of an armed ex-Marine. I remained calm and casual. Bashful snorted scornfully. The tough, black mustang tossed his head.  
“Hey, Manny,” voice casual, reining Bashful to a halt on the opposite side of the spring-fed pool. The water was clear, fresh, and inviting. The blooms of the blue and lavender Gentians nodding in a whimsical breeze.  
“Sam,” Manny drawling nodding in reply, his forearm resting across the saddle horn. “When you gonna get that fine mare bred? She ain’t gettin’ any younger.”  
“I thought this fall might be a good time,” prosaic, releasing the reins. I raised my hat, removing a glove running my fingers through my sweaty, shoulder-length hair thinking it was time for a haircut.  
Suddenly, the black mustang snorted and sidled sharply as even a wild horse raised on the range will do when it catches the scent of a mountain lion or hears the sound of a rattler its tread has startled from a doze in the shade. He was big, and I could see Manny was surprised and angered as he brought the powerful horse around full circle and made him stand still. The mustang trembled, nostrils flaring, coat growing darker with sweat. The yellow and white daisies bobbing around the dusty hooves.  
I might have become uneasy, but I took my cue from Bashful. She calmly turned her head to the right peering behind us. Hat and glove still in one hand and hair in the other hand I twisted in the saddle.  
I watched as a bearded, red-haired man as big as Gurd trundled up a slope into sight on the trail juggling pine cones, dropping them, staring at me comically agape. He brought to mind the character Tom Bombadil in the Tolkien fantasy, Lord of The Rings. I heard the hooves of the mustang making its way down the slope, but didn’t turn to watch.  
“Do you know that guy?” the redhead asked huffing up, mouth hanging open, eyes bulging. Sweating profusely he released the buckles on the straps across his chest and waist, easing his big pack to the ground.  
“Pardon? Do I know you?” pointedly, lowering my chin to face him directly inadvertently Desi-nodding, a habit acquired in childhood from my Indian mother.  
Replacing my hat, I swiftly lifted my left arm out full length while holding the reins. The movement put very little pressure on Bashful’s mouth, but she could see what I wanted her to do. She shifted quickly to the left swinging her rump around to the right easily bumping the redhead into the pool. His dive was comical a stiff expressionless topple into the pool but I didn’t laugh.  
I dismounted quickly unsaddling Bashful while watching him thrashing around, a bit theatrically I thought. Spluttering, he stood up waist-deep near the center of the pond. Keeping an eye on him while he shook the water from his hair wiping his eyes, I led Bashful to drink where the spring welled up into the pool. I settled my saddlebags, gloves, and hat on a stone ledge among the delicate blooms of Spotted Saxifrag.  
“I was raised in a country where introductions are signs of respect,” articulate, eyes direct, standing arms akimbo.  
Squinting up at me through the dappled sunlight, he nodded thoughtfully. He spread his palms down to rest on the surface of the water as though to calm the ripples traveling from his body to the flowering banks of the pond. Contemplative, dripping Bombadil among the daisies and gentians a subject for surrealist, Max Ernst.  
“I apologize,” he said, brows knotted, sincere, gaze contrite grinning up at me. His dimples were evident through the short beard, which was darker than his pale, red hair. “My name is Ethan Dewar. I’m so famous sometimes I forget some people don’t recognize me.”  
“I’m Sam Hat and this is Bashful,” warmly, suddenly realizing who he was trying not to ogle. “I didn’t recognize you without your cowboy hat and costume, Do-Do.”  
Gritting my teeth, shouting a silent prayer to Lord Ganesha, son of Shiva, for help. Most devoted rodeo fans like me are familiar with Do-Do Dewar, his arena antics, gossip surrounding his private life, rumors about his reputed wealth, his idiosyncrasies. I hadn’t considered the possibility the meteor-man might be a notable, rich eccentric.  
I led Bashful a short distance downslope removing her reins allowing her to nibble the lush growth of grass between sagebrush at the edges of the trickling water. I walked back to sit on the ledge watching Ethan wading to shore, removing his boots.  
Ethan is handsome, strikingly Scots-Irish handsome. Sculpted face, beneath the beard a strong chin, hollow cheeks, an impish nose, cupid lips, and elfish ears. He seemed like a down-to-earth guy, genuine, nothing like the made-up, flippant, joking persona on TV interviews. Watching Ethan teasing, taunting bulls—more like terrorizing tactics to me—I sensed he disliked the animals. A veterinarian can tell.  
“Come here often, Do-Do?” only a hint of sarcasm, squinting against the sun, taking off my boots and socks wriggling my toes. I dug into my bag of nuts, dried fruit, and chocolate chips.  
Ethan laughed, the light in his bright, green eyes sparkling. He stripped off his wet clothes laying them out to dry. I was amazed at how hairy he was.  
I pulled off my shirt, jeans, and boxers. I leaned back on my elbows in a spot of shade spreading my legs to dangle over the edge of the flat stone, feet in the water. Munching, I offered Ethan a handful.  
“I don’t eat between meals,” Ethan declining, face crinkling, hair sprinkling sparkling drops as he twitched his head, blew the water from his nose into a bandanna.  
“Anybody ever mention you are god-awful handsome?” Ethan asked stepping closer, eyes unblinking, droplets in his lashes like diamonds.  
“Ad infinitum,” vulgar, grinning, gripping his waist in a scissor hold with my legs.  
“About as many times as you’ve heard people tell you you’re hotter than hell,” lewd, grunting tumbling with him into the warm water laughing, his penis shrieking, “OCH! Hoots mon!”  
#  
“I don’t understand how any doctor who operates on animals or humans can eat meat,” breathless, chest heaving the next morning ending our discussion on vegetarianism. Ethan released me from a Half Nelson.  
“You’re a man experiencing unrequited love,” Ethan said switching to something on his mind.  
Breathing heavily we climbed onto the stone ledge flinching from its heat under the white-hot sun moving into the shade. The day was bright, sweltering but we were fresh and dripping from our nude frolic in the pool. My eyes flicked to Bashful in the pinyon shadows tail lazily swishing at flies.  
“Ethan, honey-buddy,” slightly exasperated, palms rubbing water from my face, glaring sideways reaching over to grab his bearded chin.  
“If you love him why are you here with me?” Ethan asked, eyebrows rising, broad forehead wrinkling. Lifting the ocarina seldom out of his reach he played for few a moments. The melody sounded classical, fitting, harmonious for a pinyon-woodland setting, wildflowers, butterflies, soothing.  
“Because I love him,” tone lightly lilting, in contrast to glaring and jerking his beard hard. His green eyes flaring in momentary surprise, but I wanted him to remember what I said.  
“I make no demands on Gurd,” a little heatedly thinking I‘d said enough about my relationship with Gurd in the last twelve hours for Ethan to understand the situation. “For him, sex is raw, instinctual, physical, nothing spiritual, or emotional, no fidelity necessary.  
“Gurd’s… not really attracted to me… or anybody… sexually,” murmuring, eyes lowering to gaze at the gently rippling water hiding the ache the disappointment. “Good looks and hot bodies are meaningless to Gurd. His libido is dormant until he’s wrestling. He’s turned on by my wrestling… not me. I don’t believe it has anything to do with dominance… just the strenuous physical engagement triggers his libido.”  
“Tell me more about Mr. Khase,” Ethan’s voice seemed more casual than his body language intimated, a scheming Billy-goat.  
“His beginnings are mythic,” exhaling noisily, clearing my throat, searching for a way to begin. I released his beard, rubbing the stubble on my chin, smiling.  
“Ooookay, you have my attention,” Ethan said, frank, direct.  
By this time I was fully aware Ethan was a highly intelligent man knowledgeable about North American natural history, and cultural prehistory. Not surprisingly, in the vicinity of a water source in the desert, there were a few fragments of prehistoric artifacts and animal tracks around the pond. We had casually examined and briefly discussed these before our wrestling session.  
Gurd had told me his odd dream and his mother’s interruption. I wondered if Ethan knew anything about the Old World. I wanted him to understand everything about Gurd, who had spent much of his youth in the Middle East and Asia. I realized Gurd’s future would be determined by his relationship with Ethan. I believed the nature of my future with Gurd depended on how well Ethan understood him.  
“Gurd was raised in the Old World,” holding Ethan’s gaze lifting the forefinger of my right hand, shifting sitting with my feet in the pond.  
“His father’s people are believed to have moved from the Caucasus to Macedonia a long time ago where a Khase ancestor married into the family of Philip of Macedon, father of Alexander the Great. The Caucasus and the ancient borders of Macedonia were on the shores of the Black Sea, which was a kind of superhighway in those days, so it’s not hard to imagine.  
“The reputed lineage has given the Khase family a lot of power in the last few centuries in the Old World especially in the field of antiquities and archaeology,” candidly, shrugging plucking a daisy with my left hand lodging it in Ethan’s beard. “Doesn’t matter if it’s true as long as the belief is entrenched in people’s minds.  
“You have to understand Alexander the Great is very much alive in the Old World,” reflectively, remembering my mother and Prayagraj, glancing down at Bashful nibbling grass in the dappled light. “More than Americans realize. I used to hear tales about him in the evenings in India. Telling stories about Alexander is an undying tradition in the Old World. There are mostly mythical versions of his exploits and conquests published in nearly every language in Europe and the Middle East known as Alexander Romances. So maybe you can imagine the power of a person who people believe is related to him. Gurd has a tattoo of Alexander’s head in profile on his neck above a scar from a bullet. The image is the logo of his family’s company.  
“Sounds like a background could give a fellow the big head,” Ethan said encouragingly slipping the ocarina into a leather case giving me his full attention.  
“Yep,” frowning faintly, eyes downcast, twisting my lips, “it could, but it doesn’t.  
“Both his mother and father,” matter-of-fact, sighing, a brief lift of eyebrows, lifting my middle finger beside the forefinger indicating a second point, “are Circassian whose families were originally from the northern Caucasus. The Circassians were driven from their homeland by the Russians. Settled in communities in Europe, the Middle East, America, like San Francisco where Gurd was born.  
“His mother experienced some complications immediately following his birth,” ruefully, smiling, wiggling my two fingers, plucking and planting another daisy behind Ethan’s ear, “couldn’t be a mother… couldn’t hold him and nurse him for over a month after he was born. His dad was there but the presence of a loving, nursing mother is a necessary complement to a loving father.  
“Critters need a mother,” tenderly, gaze steady watching Ethan watching me, seeing in his eyes I’d struck a personal chord.  
“I think that has something to do with… well, he’s distant,” eyes wandering to the water, quietly, thoughtfully, recognizing Ethan and Gurd had things in common and could quickly establish a rapport. I sensed in Ethan the same quality in Gurd: easy to love but not easily giving his love. “He’s distrustful, disconnected… cold. People are falling in love with Gurd all the time but he just doesn’t recognize it… disinterested. He may seem arrogant to some people but he’s not. He’s distant, not egotistical.”  
Gurd doesn’t bond with people. He is caring and concerned but rarely demonstrates tenderness. He has meaningful relationships with his dogs and horses, but not with people. I plucked and laced a daisy into Ethan’s wet, red curls.  
I hoped Ethan would help Gurd develop a bond, a buoyant life-vest preventing the course of Gurd’s life from sinking further downward in his depression and possible suicide. That was the one critical thing Gurd lacked, the one thing that could turn his life around—a human bond.  
I had witnessed the recovery of many abused animals when placed in the hands of the right person. I thought a rodeo clown could spark the laughter that might save Gurd’s life, take his mind away from his past. I haven’t been able to do it.  
I’m not a jovial person as my partner, assistants, and patrons have noted but they all agree animals love me. My life has provided few occasions for humor. My mother’s family disowned her after she married my father, the somber, fair-haired, American-turned-Vedic-philosopher. Life for a half-caste without relatives was hard in teeming, overcrowded Prayagraj not much to joke about. Wealthy Brahmans praised my looks and used me in exchange for cash, resources a poor boy could not refuse. I may have been considered a rung or two on the ladder above the domestic animals like the donkeys and stray dogs, which I fed and tended.  
On our trip to New Mexico, my father was killed in Calgary, Alberta, proselytizing on the nature of reincarnation to born-again Christians. My mother died of pneumonia in Santa Fe where she believed a relative had a restaurant. Orphaned at seventeen, American men thought me handsome, desirable. Maybe in a way, I’m too much like Gurd, melancholy, too much childhood stress.  
“Gurd, his dad and Gurd’s bodyguard-tutor,” sighing, raising my ring-finger, waggling all three, “traveled all around the world on expeditions to help their clients, museum curators mostly, other archaeologists, anthropologists, and wealthy donors acquire artifacts for their museums or data for their books and articles. They were ambushed several times over the years on their expeditions.  
“Gurd has had scraps with guys in places like the jungles of Africa and the docks of Hong Kong,” voice low, brows pulling together, I eased a Spotted Saxifrag from the ground weaving it into Ethan’s hair. “Guy’s trying to take their money or take him for ransom. He had professional wrestling instructions, his tutor and bodyguard, a Circassian warrior, taught him how to ride and fight with a knife, how to shoot all kinds of firearms. So, the men who attempted to abduct Gurd are dead and if they’re not, the injuries he gave the ones that got away probably make them wish they were dead.  
“As fortune would have it, Gurd suffers from childhood post-traumatic stress disorder. He has contemplated suicide,” whispering, eyes frozen. “I live in fear of it.  
“Gurd wasn’t with him when Thamade, his bodyguard was killed in Madrid,” murmuring, holding up my little finger, making a fist, dropping my hand, turning my gaze to Ethan’s. “He grieves feels guilty. I believe all his grief and anger may be flaring up because the tenth anniversary of Thamade’s death is coming this summer,” worried, somber, stretching to pick some blue gentian, my Ganesha pendant dangling.  
Within the golden symbol for the Om embedded with pearls and red coral was the carved turquoise elephant-head of Ganesha. It had been my mother’s.  
“Get the picture?” voice firm, eyes steady inquiring. Ethan nodded silently.  
“Why don’t you come back to Albuquerque to meet Gurd, find out all about him for yourself?” sincerely, planting gentian in his hair and beard, holding Ethan’s gaze.  
“He has a nice condo and he remodeled a big house with a three-car garage that has a second-story apartment all for his business, Scarfagus. A play on the word sarcophagus and the scar on his face. Has a seven-foot-tall replica of the sphinx, a fountain and pool with lotus and Koi and a couple of palm trees in the front,” encouraging, lifting eyebrows, smiling, pulling more daisies planting a field in his hair drawing back to examine my creation.  
“You are handsome, Sam, perfect body, sexy. Six-foot, hundred eighty pounds?” Ethan questioned softly, sharp penetrating eyes examining my face. “I bet puppies, kittens and colts love those kind hazel eyes, sandy hair, ruddy cheeks, strong chin. The curve of your lips gives you the look of a perpetually happy guy. Are you happy Sam?”  
“Honey-buddy,” slightly exasperated, arching my eyebrows, a brief glare, shoving another blossom in his hair.  
“Where’d you get that term of endearment?” Ethan asked grinning, lightly pinching my nose.  
“It’s English for a phrase my clients in India used,” sternly, lowering my chin looking up at him from beneath frowning brows silencing him, reaching for my phone. “I was a poor, boy-toy for rich men.  
“Gurd is a very generous guy,” back on subject, powering the phone, checking the charge.  
“He contributes to a lot of charities anonymously, especially to the kind that helps poor, minority children,” smiling, leaning back to focus the camera, snapping a few frames. Ethan miraculously pulling a different face for each shot; happy, angry, sad, sexy, dumb.  
“He loves children,” suddenly realizing I hadn’t mentioned the one thing that might intrigue Ethan most. “He clowns for orphanages all around the state when he has time. His clown costume is a mix of Old World clowns. The kids call his clown persona Mi Héroe.  
“Just come back with me and see what he’s like for yourself. You’ll have a good time,” enthusiastic, insistent, tugging his chest hair.  
Trying to assess if the expression of reluctance and doubt on his face was genuine or a clown face, I thought of the dream his mother interpreted for Gurd. Neve’s interpretation of the dream I had explained to Dama.  
“He has dreamed of you,” whispering, arching eyebrows, smiling wickedly, tweaking his nose.  
I could see Ethan’s expression wasn’t a clown affectation intended to be comical, but it was hilarious in the first instant. In the second instant, I could see the question in his intense stare.  
“No,” somberly, shaking my head, eyes unblinking. “Let him tell you, Ethan.”

Chapter Sixteen  
Wildfire and Wrestling

Ethan helped Sam release Bashful into the pasture and unhook the trailer when they stopped at the veterinary compound. On the convoluted drive down narrow, dirt roads, Ethan nearly lost his sense of direction before they arrived at an adobe and stucco house. The traditional Spanish wall of the same materials surrounded the home, yard, and garage. New Mexico Sunflowers, red, orange, and yellow zinnias, and desert marigold blossomed profusely along the inside of the wall as though in defiance of the drought.  
The two, big Anatolian shepherds greeted Sam and thoroughly sniffed, and licked Ethan before they could approach the house. Sam introduced them properly to Ethan as Bullwinkle and Rocky.  
Ethan petted the dogs and gazed around the property as Sam walked over to the wall briefly speaking with an elderly, Mexican lady coming out of the house next door. He thanked her for feeding the dogs while he was away speaking loudly as though she was hard of hearing. The two had an animated exchange the lady pointing north Sam gazing up in that direction.  
“Look!” Sam yelled walking to the south end of the front yard standing by the flower bed.  
Ethan joined him looking over the house and trees. Shocked, immediately stricken with horror, Ethan gaped at a towering, white column of smoke billowing straight up into the windless, blue sky. He guessed it was not many miles from the place he and Sam camped the previous night.  
“It’s in the National Forest and maybe Bandelier. Los Alamos may be in danger,” Sam said staring. “Did you know there’s been a ban on hikers and campers up there? You could’ve been toast in another twenty-four hours if it moved east instead of west.”  
“No, I didn’t know,” Ethan replied forcing a smile, face wrinkling with the effort.  
Ethan gazed at the plume of smoke trying to conceal his anxiety thinking of the tragic loss of so many trees so much wildlife. Another wound to Nature taking decades to heal. He was certain The Rig was to blame by influencing legislative policy on carbon emissions and climate change.  
“About time!” as Sam closed the door against the baking heat.  
“That’s Cleopatra. She and Caesar run the place.” Sam warned whispering confidentially. He smiled, quickly removing his hat to the coat rack as the two, curious African Gray parrots fluttered into view, hovering, settling on shoulder and head.  
“What’s this?” the one on the left shoulder screeched eying Ethan.  
“This is Ethan. This is Cleo and Caesar,” Sam said pointing first to the one on the left shoulder then the one on his head.  
“Big penis,” Cleo said gawking at Ethan.  
“I didn’t teach her to say that, Gurd did,” Sam said scowling. “She didn’t learn any rude behavior from me.”  
“Gurd rude,” said Caesar.  
“Rude,” Sam agreed in an admonishing tone.  
Ethan instantly felt at ease in Sam’s home. It was neat, furnished in a functional, elegant manner with Modern Danish tables, spoke back sofas and round chairs all in solid oak. Several vases of green or blue, Swedish glass were arranged in imposing pairs. Two Norfolk Island Pines bracketed the big window in the wall opposite the door, and an assortment of Kangaroo ferns spread across tabletops and bookshelves. The cool air scented, humid like a forest of evergreens similar to Ethan’s home environment.  
A three-foot, bronze sculpture of two upright, nude, wrestling men bound together at the waist by a belt stood in one corner. On the hardwood floors were traditional Scandinavian Rya rugs, shaggy piles, geometric designs in earthen hues. On the walls of the big room and adjacent study, Ethan recognized prints of Golden Age, Gold Season, Icarus and Pont Royal Pariisi, nudes of youths on a seashore, or toweling dry, by the Finnish painter Magnus Enckell.  
“We have a few hours,” Sam said stooping to tug off his boots dropping them on the rug beside the door the parrots fluttering onto the coat rack turning to watch. “If you’d like to shower you can try on some of Gurd’s clothes. He leaves stuff here for the times he stays overnight. There’s a tub if you’d like a hot soak instead of a shower.”  
“Where’s Gurd,” said Cleo.  
“What?” Asked Ethan lowering his big backpack to the rug, crouching to remove his boots. “I can’t go with you. I wasn’t invited.”  
“I have an invitation to bring a guest,” Sam replied, cajoling. “It’s just the reception, casual dress. It’ll be a good time to meet Gurd, and his mother and friends. Mind if I trim your hair and beard? Subdue your wild, animal magnetism?”  
#  
In the bedroom after a hot soak together in the tub, Sam laid several items of Gurd’s clothes out on the bed. Ethan felt a sharp pang of confused jealousy embedding itself in the tightly tangled knot of sympathy he felt in his heart for Gurd Khase, Brónach-tarbh’s correlate in this physical dimension.  
In the end, Sam dressed Ethan in a white silk shirt, indigo, linen, sports jacket, pearl gray slacks, and black suede cowboy boots, Yves Saint Laurent head to toe. As long as he kept the coat buttoned and belt buckled no one could see the slacks unbuttoned because his waist was bigger than Gurd’s. Uncomfortable in another man’s clothes, Ethan sat on the bed watching restlessly, feeling anxious as Sam dressed in dark brown, suede brogan-style shoes, a long-sleeved white shirt, fawn-colored slacks and vest, a bolo tie with turquoise and silver clasp.  
“Hurry back!” screeched Cleo from a Norfolk Island pine as Sam opened the door.  
“Who got married,” Ethan asked settling awkwardly in the front seat of Sam’s 2007 Volkswagen Golf with the A/C on high. “Will there be a crowd?”  
“About fifty people. Two archaeology students that just finished their M. A.’s,” Sam replied pressing the garage-door opener, shifting into reverse. “Gerald Finch and his sweetheart of many years, Melissa Hawkins. They both worked at Scarfagus the two years while they were in the Master’s program.  
“A few years ago Gurd managed to convince a wealthy Japanese businessman to establish an institute funding and awarding grants to archaeologists who want to investigate the ties between prehistoric Japanese culture, and Peruvian prehistory,” Sam said in such a manner to remind Ethan of Gurd’s generosity. “Thanks to Gurd’s influence and Gerald’s qualifications in research and fieldwork in that area, and their command of the Spanish language, they were awarded a grant. They’ll be flying down there next week. They are grateful, but they will both be happy to get out from under Gurd.”  
Ethan understood Sam was continuing to faithfully paint a candid picture of Gurd and he understood Sam’s final statement. He could not suppress his disgust at the thought of a man abusing his position of advantage over other people at his mercy. To Ethan, it was equivalent to his revulsion and anger with the system—The Rig—that abused the rules of nature and society. He felt his loathing twist, hot lava swirling, choking the swelling bud of empathy in his heart for Gurd, provoking a good deal of confusion in his escalating anxieties.  
The portrait of Gurd Khase painted by Sam and the file his Santa Fe agent had given Ethan was beginning to look like the brute in Kur. Ethan wondered how Brónach behaved when Pomp was not there to observe him.  
“Ethan,” Sam said gently staring at the road. “Gurd doesn’t sleep well. Gurd has disturbing dreams at night and distressing visions during the day. He experiences physical pain in his chest, shortness of breath, anxiety attacks. He’s under fairly constant assaults, mental and physical and unfortunately he has little respect for European-Americans. Understand?”  
“I’m trying,” Ethan nodded, but he also was having a little problem breathing. He wondered when they met if Gurd would sense something of the relationship between Pomp and Brónach. Ethan wasn’t sure this was the right time and place for an initial meeting in the material world between strangers who had a serious, personal bond in another realm. He stared out the window thinking there were too many things that left him wondering, making him anxious.  
Sam parked at the end of a line of vehicles in the long drive at the Khase estate. Ethan felt relieved to unfold from the cramped confines of the small car. The Anatolian Shepherds, penned in the kennels, were barking sporadically. A mockingbird sang loudly from its perch atop the barn weathervane the white, sun blazing.  
Neve’s older sister, Nash, greeted them warmly at the front doors. She was a tall, slender woman with broad shoulders, attired in understated elegance white hair arranged in a chignon, pearls around her neck.  
Ethan was icy-hot and itchy. He felt naked in his new haircut and trim bread. The fabric of Gurd’s clothes chafed abrasively against his skin. Walking with Sam through the broad corridor extending through the center of the house was like traveling through the passages from one netherworld into another.  
Sam slid the glass door open. They strolled across the colonnade to the garden. The sweet strains of “Claire de Lune” by Claude Debussy drifting from the sound system, a pleasant ambiance.  
Ethan’s gaze swept across the enchanting sight. Extending from a central pole to the garden walls an awning of alternating white and sheer drapes sheltered the entire garden softly muting the bright sunlight. Tables seating six or eight covered in saffron cloth with yellow-and-white floral centerpieces were strewn with purses, china, crystal, and wrapped gifts. White lotus blossoms drifted in the gentle ripples of the fountain. Red, amber, pink and white roses bloomed copiously along the encircling garden wall.  
A crowd of people. Dressed in casual elegance, men in dark blazers light slacks. Mature women in light pants suits, younger women in dress skirts and pastel blouses, jewelry sparkling, children miniature images. Friends and families chatting, sipping champagne, smiling for photos.  
Delirious with anxiety over the approaching encounter with Gurd Khase, musing over allowable errors Ethan accepted a piece of wedding cake. He declined a glass of champagne. Ethan managed to smile but felt himself wobble as he strolled among the guests following Sam engaging in brief amiable greetings.  
Ethan caught site of Gurd. He was squatting on his heels talking with a child, rising, and turning to the sound of Sam’s voice.  
Ethan scooped the cake into his hand, raised it, and slapped Gurd’s smiling face.  
The following moment amid screams and protests from the guests, Gurd was tightly gripping the back of Ethan’s neck with his right hand and clasping Ethan’s right wrist with his left. Ethan gripping Gurd’s neck with his left hand. Eyes assessing steadiness of stance, body weight, grips in an instant.  
Twisting backward abruptly, Ethan broke free of Gurd’s grip. In a seamless, fluid looping second lurching forward grabbing Gurd in a bear hug. A double over hook his hands tightly gripping together at Gurd’s back, pinning both Gurd’s arms. Then, realizing he risked everything on this one move, he followed the forward momentum lifting his body onto Gurd pushing him to fall heavily onto the ground on his back forcing a loud, angry grunt, hair bobbing, legs kicking.  
They rolled across the lawn to the continuing rising crescendo of screams. The sounds of cracking furniture, breaking dishes, and glass. Breathing heavily, they smashed into a wall. Ethan on top drapes wavering gently down thorns ripping fabric piercing skin. Rose petals fluttering.  
“Time to get real, Hurdy Gurdy Man,” Ethan panting between rasping breaths excited, angry chuckles, “tell me what it is you want to do. Do adhbhar airson bith?” Realizing he was babbling in Scots-Gaelic as he did in bipolar episodes switching to English, “What is your reason for existence?”  
Ethan felt aroused by the deep growl of outrage and disbelief rumbling in Gurd’s chest and throat. He sensed Gurd gathering his legs to thrash against the wall. Gurd thrust against it launching them rolling furiously crashing within seconds into the stone rim of the fountain. Ethan on top of Gurd.  
“You will not get out of my grip until I get an answer,” Ethan gasped, his mind suddenly grappling with the inexplicable image of Gurd a hung-up bull rider. Ethan hugging trying to save him from an enraged, bucking bull. Brónach-tarbh.  
“Hey! Who are you fighting? Can you hear me?” Ethan challenged hoarsely straining to hold his grip. Sweat and cake icing slipping between his fingers. Fearful he had triggered a PTSD episode in Gurd.  
He could feel Gurd’s chest heaving his arms straining against Ethan’s encompassing grasp. Twisting, Gurd shoved his feet against the fountain. He heard the soles of Gurd’s shoes scrap the stone struggling to find leverage. He felt Gurd’s sleek muscles tense and heave. Rolling and crashing into tripping, falling people, into furniture splintering, bending, tearing. Waves of screams and yells washing over them. Ethan felt men grabbing at them.  
They came to rest in a thorny, red-rose bush. Ethan on the top, chest surging against chest. The left side of Ethan’s face pressed firmly against the left side of Gurd’s. Ethan’s lips at his ear, hot gasps, trembling tongue licking cake crumbs and icing. Tasting Gurd’s sweat intoxicating, his scent hypnotic. Ethan’s erection straining against his jeans someone pulling at his feet.  
“Answer, Hurdy Gurdy, answer,” Ethan chuckled, sweat-slick cheek pressed to cheek. Breathing heavily into his ear, lightly licking the pierced lobe, the red amber. Blood from the puncture on his lip from the rose thorns dropping onto the earring. He felt the aching, swelling bud of confusing feelings in his chest pressed against Gurd’s chest about to burst, his erection swelling. “Then I will give you the day, and you’ll be the big man still. Tell me what that big erection between your legs is all about.”  
Gurd’s roar of rage in his ear nearly deafening him. The tone of his long, shuddering gasp sounding like the fury of submission. Suddenly, Ethan felt every muscle in Gurd’s taut body, and contorted face stiffen for an instant then relax as though shocked by some profound personal epiphany, relief, release. Ethan sensed their heartbeats synchronizing. The tingle of Brónach’s touch.  
Between labored breaths, Gurd whispered his answer into Ethan’s ear. Gurd’s response stunned Ethan. He tenderly kissed Gurd’s ear with his bleeding lips grimacing, unable to breathe, trembling orgasm. Turning, lifting his head to look Gurd in the eye for the first time. Ethan felt the heavy turbulence in his aching heart bursting, blossoming jubilantly, warm and fuzzy petals, tears in his eyes.


End file.
